Community of Madrid
The Community of Madrid is one of the seventeen autonomous communities and 50 provinces of Spain. It is located at the heart of the Iberian Peninsula and Central Plateau ; its capital and largest municipality is Madrid. The Community of Madrid is bounded to the south and east by Castilla–La Mancha and to the north and west by Castile and León. It was formally created in 1983, in order to address the particular status of the city of Madrid as the capital of the Spanish State and in urban hierarchy. Its boundaries are coextensive with those of the province of Madrid, which was until then conventionally included in the historical region of New Castile.
The Community of Madrid is the third most populous in Spain with 7,058,041 inhabitants, roughly a seventh of the national total, mostly concentrated in the metropolitan area of Madrid. It is also the most densely populated autonomous community. Madrid has both the largest nominal GDP, slightly ahead of that of Catalonia, and the highest GDP per capita in the country. Madrid's economy is highly tertiarised, having a leading role in Spain's logistics and transportation.
The Community of Madrid is almost entirely comprised in the Tagus Basin, from the Central System reliefs in the north and northwest to the Tagus River bed in the southern border. The climate is generally temperate, ranging from mediterranean to semi-arid, except in the Central System highlands. It contains four World Heritage Sites: the Monastery and Royal Site of El Escorial, the university and historic centre of Alcalá de Henares, the cultural landscape of Aranjuez and the Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro park in Madrid City. In addition, the is part of the transnational Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe world heritage site.
Geography
Despite the existence of a large urban area of nearly 7 million people, the Community of Madrid still retains some remarkably unspoiled and diverse habitats and landscapes. Madrid is home to mountain peaks rising above 2,000 m, holm oak dehesas and low-lying plains. The slopes of the Guadarrama mountain range are cloaked in dense forests of Scots pine and Pyrenean oak. The Lozoya Valley supports a large black vulture colony, and one of the last bastions of the Spanish imperial eagle in the world is found in the Park Regional del Suroeste in dehesa hills between the Gredos and Guadarrama ranges. The recent possible detection of the existence of Iberian lynx in the area between the Cofio and Alberche rivers is testament to the biodiversity of the area. Taking advantage of the orography, there are several reservoirs and local dams, with the Santillana reservoir being the largest.File:Circo y cima de Peñalara1.JPG|thumb|Peñalara: the Guadarrama mountain range's highest peak.
The province of Madrid is shaped approximately like an equilateral triangle, with the city of Madrid located near its center. First, by the western side, it borders the "Sistema Central", the southern border features a protrusion following the Tagus River in order to include the royal site of Aranjuez in the region; the eastern edge of the triangle comes from the rupture of the fluvial river basins. This autonomous community is located in the basin of the Tagus River. The Tagus passes through the southern border of the Autonomy in its path west toward the Atlantic Ocean, draining the waters of the Jarama River, the Alberche and the Guadarrama in the Community.
File:Capra pyrenaica, La Pedriza, Madrid, España, 2016 09.JPG|thumb|The Iberian ibex in La Pedriza.
This autonomous community also includes the exclave of Dehesa de la Cepeda, a mostly open-area geographically located between the provinces of Ávila and Segovia in the autonomous community of Castile and León.
The Province of Madrid occupies a surface area of approximately . More specifically, the exact position of Madrid is 3° 40' of longitude west of Greenwich, England, and 40° 23' north of the equator.
Most of the province lies between 600 and 1,000 m above sea level. However, there the altitude ranges from 2,428 metres of Peñalara to 430 metres at the Alberche river when it leaves Villa del Prado into the province of Toledo. Other considerable heights, as well as being famous, are the Bola del Mundo in Navacerrada, at a height of 2,258 m, the Siete Picos in Cercedilla, at 2,138 m, and the Peña Cebollera at the northernmost end of the province, a tripoint between the Madrid region and the provinces of Segovia and Guadalajara.
Fauna
Among the protected species of birds nesting in the region stand out the Spanish imperial eagle, the golden eagle, the Bonelli's eagle, the cinereous vulture, the peregrine falcon and the black stork.Exotic invasive species of birds and mammals in the region include the red-eared slider, the monk parakeet, the common snapping turtle, the rose-ringed parakeet, the American mink and the raccoon. Species described as "out of place" and with an increasing population include the black-headed gull, the lesser black-backed gull, the great cormorant and Eurasian collared dove, while the emblematic iberian ibex is presented as a case of a species "gone out of control" in La Pedriza following its re-introduction in the region in 1990 after roughly a century disappeared from the Madrilenian mountains.
The mountain amphibians living at a high altitude include the fire salamander, the marbled newt, the alpine newt, the iberian frog, the European tree frog or the common midwife toad. At a middle elevation in the mountain reaches close to water streams there are species such as the Bosca's newt, the southern marbled newt, the mediterranean tree frog or the iberian midwife toad. The common parsley frog and the Alytes obstetricans pertinax dwell in the limestone lowlands near the Tagus in the south-east of the region. Among the all-around amphibians adaptable to different heights stand out the natterjack toad, the common toad and the iberian green frog. Other species with a wide distribution range are the gallipato, the iberian spadefoot toad, the iberian painted frog, and the Spanish painted frog.
File:Psammodromus algirus 2601.jpg|thumb|An Algerian sand racer in Manzanares el Real.
Regarding the reptiles, species such as the Cyren's rock lizard, the European wall lizard, the iberian emerald lizard, the deaf adder, and snakes such as the smooth snake or the Vipera latastei dwell in the mountain heights. At the lower reaches of the mountains the European pond turtle and the Brediaga's skink can be found, while the western false smooth snake is restricted to areas in the south of the region. Among the species of all-around reptiles, adaptable to different biomes stand out the Spanish pond turtle, the salamanquesa, the western three-toed skink, the spiny-footed lizard, the ocellated lizard, the Algerian sand racer, Spanish psammodromus, the ubiquitous iberian wall lizard, the iberian worm lizard, the Coronella girondica, the Montpellier snake; grass snake and the viperine snake.
The fish species are affected by the high number of reservoirs in the region. Among the threatened species in the rivers stand out the European eel, the iberian barbel, the Squalius alburnoides, the Cobitis calderoni and, potentially, the Chondrostoma lemmingii. Conversely the set of invasive species of fish includes pike, black bullhead catfish, pumpkinseed, zander, common bleak, and black-bass.
Vegetation
In the vicinity of the mountain peaks, oromediterranean vegetation such as Agrostula truncatula, ', Festuca indigesta, ', , Minuartia recurva, Pilosella vahlii, Plantago holosteum and the Thymus praecox is common. Below the summit line, shrubby species such as the Cytisus oromediterraneus and the common juniper as well as the Scots pine take over. There are also masses of black pine and the pyrenean oak situated above the domain of the holm oak.Eurosiberian flora is not common in the region, and species such as the moor birch and the silver birch are restricted to very specific humid valley areas with special climate conditions.
The climax vegetation in the campiña is the holly oak. Some of the species that take over when the holly oak forest degrades are the "sticky shrub", the Retama sphaerocarpa, the French lavender, the Thymus mastichina and the Thymus zygis.
The lower reaches of Guadarrama Mountain Range are populated by species such as the Juniperus thurifera, the maritime pine, the Portuguese oak, the stone pine; only in the somewhat more humid westernmost end of the region, near the, there are forests of chestnut trees.
54,4% of the surface of the region is soil categorised as forest areas of which the 51.4% it is already covered by forests, so there is room for tree re-population. The first modest efforts towards tree re-population were taken in the Lozoya Valley in the late 19th century intending to achieve a purer water from the river, that provided the capital with water for consumption. However, the bulk of the process took place after the Spanish Civil War, with a largely successful repopulation with several species of conifers.