ECONOMY GROUP, 22nd of April 2011

THE ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF THE NATIONAL PARK TEIDE:

The national park is meant to protect the value of the vulcanic landscape and it’s flora and fauna. From the protecting point of view its important to keep the biodiversity but from the economic point it’s another turistic atraction, which is not very rentable. The main reason of the turists that come to Tenerife are the beaches, sun and the sand and the Teide mountain is just only one of many atractions the island has, but not the main. Which is the reason that there is not much profit of them, so appears the question of how to finance it (just with the money of the goverment?). The entrance and parking in the national park are free, they get money only from the restaurantes there, which we suppose is not a relevant income.

The opportunities for the increasment of the incomes:

- golf courte

- wind farm

- entrance fees and parking fees for personal transport (cars à supporting the public transportation).

RURAL GROUP, 22nd of April 2011

The National Park Teide has both advantages and disadvantages for rural areas. It provides jobs and brings money to the local population, It offers education function, encourages several activities connected to Tourism. 9 million people visit the park in a year; this has a big impact on the economy. But this is also a disadvantage; transport, the big number of vehicules causes pollution, it could be possible to introduce some ecological alternatives of means of transportation.

SOCIAL GROUP, 22nd of April 2011

Visit to Teide. Hiking trip.

Today we have not seen any important social geography process itself, so we have discussed about what we will like to focus on the upcoming days, collecting all the ideas we have.

The main idea we have discussed is migration, concretely about people coming, immigration. We want to know where, how and why they are coming from, how they are organizing themselves and if they are adopting the local culture and habits, and how they are distribute in the islands. We are interested in their perceptions of the Canary Islands, and whether this place is only a getaway to the European Union or not.

Also, we have been discussing about the spatial structure of social groups. In that sense, today we ride through an altitude profile where we were able to see the changes in the land use and landscape. It is interesting how the rapid change of the economic system (from agriculture to tourism) has triggered many social processes; among them we may mention the displacement and gentrification, not only in cities, but in the whole territory.

As it can be seen, nowadays we are coming up with many interesting ideas. What we are sure about is that it would be interesting to analyze both quantitative and even better, qualitative data. It is therefore difficult to focus on one idea, also due to we do not see what is happening in Gran Canaria, where we will carry out our field work.

ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP, 22nd of April 2011

-The whole island of Tenerife is built up by volcanic rock. The different rock types developed due to different chemistry of the lava (acidic, intermediate, mafic), and different mechanisms of how the lava comes from the magma chamber to the surface. The latter can happen as a lavaflow, which forms solid rocks with little porosity, or as an explosive gaseous eruption which forms light and porous rocks.

Up to 1000m above sea level the vegetation of the northern exposure of Tenerife is dominated by agricultural land use. Above this altitude Pinus Canariensis can be found. This Pine Forest (Corona Forestal) has been planted by the order of the government of Franco in the year 1950 in order to capture the moisture of the clouds and prevent soil erosion. Before 1950 all the Pine Forest was cut for building economic purpose. Between 500m and 1500m.a.s.l. the Laurisilva Tree can be found. Reaching an altitude of 2000m and above Vegetation increasingly adapts to the special environmental conditions like strong winds, lack of water, lack of soils, high amplitudes of temperature change between day and night, summer and winter.

The present landscape is the result of the historical evolution of this previous factors. Each eruption was followed by a phase of erosion and finally many layers of various rock types were being deposited one above the other. As the different layers are variously susceptible to erosion the landscape we can find today evolved. Further special volcanic landforms are a caldera (radial subsidence of rock) and dykes, which are chimneys of magma rising through already deposited volcanic rock and solidify there.