Yatir Forest

The Yatirwald is a forest on the southern slopes of Mount Hebron in Israel.

Geography

The Yatirwald located on the northern edge of the Negev desert and directly south of the border of the Palestinian territories to Israel. This is the largest planted forest in Israel consists of 30 km ² and is located east of the settlement Meitar and north of the city of Arad. The forest is located in an area with a dry climate in which the prevailing low humidity. At altitudes 400-850 meters above sea level on average 300 to 350 mm of precipitation falling in the year. The soils consist of calcareous rocks.

History

The system of Yatirwaldes was in 1964 by the Jewish National Fund Keren Kayemet Leisrael. The name Yatir is a derivation from the Old Testament (Joshua 21:13, 14 EU), after which the area was the children of Aaron, the Levite passed.

Since 1964 trees mostly conifers, such as Aleppo pine and Mediterranean cypress were Yatirwald over four million planted, but also deciduous trees such as terebinth, tamarisk, Chinese jujube, carob, olive, fig, eucalyptus and acacia.

Environment and Tourism

The plantings, which include vineyards and various shrub species include the spread of desertification, desertification, north of Be'er Sheva have stopped. Reduce the evaporation of low rainfall, and absorb carbon dioxide from the air. The forest is part of the FLUXNET project of NASA, which measures the exchange of carbon dioxide, water vapor and energy between the different ecosystems in the world and the atmosphere. In the Desert Research Institute in Sde Boker, the data from the various sources are evaluated under the direction of Dan Yakir of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.

The Arava Institute for Environmental Research makes experiments with date palms and wine near the Yatirwaldes and will try to locate these plants in very dry and salty conditions.

The Israel National Trail, a trail of Galilee in the north to the Gulf of Eilat in the south, runs through the Yatirwald of Meitar to Arad in the Negev desert.

Archeology

In Yatirwald in 1987, archaeological research at a synagogue building dating from the 4th to the 7th AD, the Anim Synagogue, conducted, which had been converted after the conquest of Palestine by the Muslim Arabs in the 7th century AD in a mosque. Under the stone floor were found remains of mosaics, the outside walls were still standing to a height of about 4.5 meters and enclosed a square of 14.5 m X 18.5 m. The building was to the north, towards Jerusalem, oriented. The two located in the east of the building entrances still showed the lintels.