Ribera de la Algaida

The Woodland or Ribera de la Algaida is destined to become the Suburban Park of Roquetas de Mar, a place to enjoy nature next to the houses. Some 74 hectares of nature which, two thousand years ago, was enjoyed by the inhabitants of the Roman settlement of Turaniana, a neighbourhood belonging to the most outlying municipality of Roman Baetica: Murgis.

There is a port also dating from Roman times in its immediate vicinity, and much has changed since then, today there is a large barrier reef of Posidonia oceanica, one of the Natural Monuments of Andalusia.
It is in the old silted-up lagoon between the gullies of ‘El Pastor’, which was rechannelled following the construction of the San Rafael salt pans and ‘La Culebra’, which opens into an inland lagoon and whose final stretch has recently been covered,

The rest is a hypersaline wetland, covered by halophilic plants, i.e., those that survive and appreciate salinity. Rainfall does the rest by flooding the lower areas, causing the salinity to rise and reach the surface. Due to the influence of the sea, especially high waves when it is stormy, the salinity of the lagoons closer to the sea is extremely high, so much so as to make the water change colour showing reddish tones, due to the high concentrations of algae specialized in these extreme environments.