This paper provides an overview of the last 40 years of use, and in many cases abuse, of the natu... more This paper provides an overview of the last 40 years of use, and in many cases abuse, of the natural resources in Catalonia, a country that is representative of European countries in general, and especially those in the Mediterranean region. It analyses the use of natural resources made by mining, agriculture, livestock, logging, fishing, nature tourism, and energy production and consumption. This use results in an ecological footprint, i.e., the productive land and sea surface required to generate the consumed resources and absorb the resulting waste, which is about seven times the amount available, a very high number but very similar to other European countries. This overexploitation of natural resources has a huge impact on land and its different forms of cover, air, and water. For the last 25 years, forests and urban areas have each gained almost 3% more of the territory at the expense of agricultural land; those municipalities bordering the sea have increased their number of in...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020
Significance Forests are experiencing growing risks of drought-induced mortality in a warming wor... more Significance Forests are experiencing growing risks of drought-induced mortality in a warming world. Yet, ecosystem dynamics following drought mortality remain unknown, representing a major limitation to our understanding of the ecological consequences of climate change. We provide an emerging picture of postdrought ecological trajectories based on field indicators of forest dynamics. Replacement patterns following mortality indicate limited short-term persistence of predrought dominant tree species, highlighting the potential for major ecosystem reorganization in the coming decades. The great variability of the observed dynamics within and among species reinforces the primary influence of drought characteristics and ecosystem legacies, modulated by land use, management, and past disturbances, on ongoing drought-related species turnover and their potential implications for future forest biodiversity and ecosystem services.
AimMediterranean terrestrial ecosystems serve as reference laboratories for the investigation of ... more AimMediterranean terrestrial ecosystems serve as reference laboratories for the investigation of global change because of their transitional climate, the high spatiotemporal variability of their environmental conditions, a rich and unique biodiversity and a wide range of socio‐economic conditions. As scientific development and environmental pressures increase, it is increasingly necessary to evaluate recent progress and to challenge research priorities in the face of global change.LocationMediterranean terrestrial ecosystems.MethodsThis article revisits the research priorities proposed in a 1998 assessment.ResultsA new set of research priorities is proposed: (1) to establish the role of the landscape mosaic on fire‐spread; (2) to further research the combined effect of different drivers on pest expansion; (3) to address the interaction between drivers of global change and recent forest management practices; (4) to obtain more realistic information on the impacts of global change and...
ABSTRACT We investigated the effect of soil microclimate on the structure and functioning of soil... more ABSTRACT We investigated the effect of soil microclimate on the structure and functioning of soil microbial communities in a Mediterranean Holm-oak forest subjected to 10 years of partial rain exclusion manipulations, simulating average drought conditions expected in Mediterranean areas for the following decades. We applied a high throughput DNA pyrosequencing technique coupled to parallel measurements of microbial respiration (RH) and temperature sensitivity of microbial respiration (Q10). Some consistent changes in the structure of bacterial communities suggest a slow process of community shifts parallel to the trend towards oligotrophy in response to long-term droughts. However, the structure of bacterial communities was mainly determined by short-term environmental fluctuations associated with sampling date (winter, spring and summer) rather than long-term (10 years) shifts in baseline precipitation. Moreover, long-term drought did not exert any chronic effect on the functioning of soil microbial communities (RH and Q10), emphasizing the functional stability of these communities to this long-term but mild shifts in water availability. We hypothesize that the particular conditions of the Mediterranean climate with strong seasonal shifts in both temperature and soil water availability but also characterized by very extreme environmental conditions during summer, was acting as a strong force in community assembling, selecting phenotypes adapted to the semiarid conditions characterizing Mediterranean ecosystems. Relations of climate with the phylogenetic structure and overall diversity of the communities as well as the distribution of the individual responses of different lineages (genera) to climate confirmed our hypotheses, evidencing communities dominated by thermotolerant and drought-tolerant phenotypes.
Plant trait information is essential for understanding plant evolution, vegetation dynamics, and ... more Plant trait information is essential for understanding plant evolution, vegetation dynamics, and vegetation responses to disturbance and management. Furthermore, in Mediterranean ecosystems, changes in fire regime may be more relevant than direct changes in climatic conditions, making the knowledge of fire‐related traits especially important. Thus the purpose of this data set was to compile the most updated and comprehensive information on fire‐related traits for vascular plant species of the Mediterranean Basin, that is, traits related to plant persistence and regeneration after fire. Data were collected from an extensive literature review and from field and experimental observations. The data source is documented for each value. Since life history traits may vary spatially or with environmental conditions, we did not aggregate them by species; i.e., traits and species are repeated in different records if they were observed by different researchers and/or in different locations. Li...
Uno de los principales argumentos manejados por quienes sostienen que la ecología y los ecólogos ... more Uno de los principales argumentos manejados por quienes sostienen que la ecología y los ecólogos deben comprometerse más con la sociedad es la urgencia de los problemas ambientales que existen en nuestra sociedad (pérdida de biodiversidad, incendios forestales, política forestal, cambio climático, pérdida de hábitat, contaminación, etc.). Si los ecólogos dedican su esfuerzo y conocimiento a intentar entender el funcionamiento de los ecosistemas, éste debe ser puesto al servicio de la solución de los problemas ...
Current climatic trends involve both increasing temperatures and climatic variability, with extre... more Current climatic trends involve both increasing temperatures and climatic variability, with extreme events becoming more frequent. Increasing concern on extreme climatic events has triggered research on vegetation shifts. However, evidences of vegetation shifts resulting from these events are still relatively rare. Empirical evidence supports the existence of stabilizing processes minimizing and counteracting the effects of these events, reinforcing community resilience. We propose a demographic framework to understand this inertia to change based on the balance between adult mortality induced by the event and enhanced recruitment or adult survival after the event. The stabilizing processes potentially contributing to this compensation include attenuation of the adult mortality caused by the event, due to site quality variability, to tolerance, phenotypic variability, and plasticity at population level, and to facilitative interactions. Mortality compensation may also occur by incre...
Biological invasions by non-native or "exotic" plant species are widely recognised as a... more Biological invasions by non-native or "exotic" plant species are widely recognised as an important component of human-caused global environmental change, often resulting in a sig- nificant loss in the economic value, biological diversity and function of invaded ecosystems. A fundamental challenge posed by biological invasions has been the identification of characteristics associated with the invasion success of exotic species. We
This paper provides an overview of the last 40 years of use, and in many cases abuse, of the natu... more This paper provides an overview of the last 40 years of use, and in many cases abuse, of the natural resources in Catalonia, a country that is representative of European countries in general, and especially those in the Mediterranean region. It analyses the use of natural resources made by mining, agriculture, livestock, logging, fishing, nature tourism, and energy production and consumption. This use results in an ecological footprint, i.e., the productive land and sea surface required to generate the consumed resources and absorb the resulting waste, which is about seven times the amount available, a very high number but very similar to other European countries. This overexploitation of natural resources has a huge impact on land and its different forms of cover, air, and water. For the last 25 years, forests and urban areas have each gained almost 3% more of the territory at the expense of agricultural land; those municipalities bordering the sea have increased their number of in...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020
Significance Forests are experiencing growing risks of drought-induced mortality in a warming wor... more Significance Forests are experiencing growing risks of drought-induced mortality in a warming world. Yet, ecosystem dynamics following drought mortality remain unknown, representing a major limitation to our understanding of the ecological consequences of climate change. We provide an emerging picture of postdrought ecological trajectories based on field indicators of forest dynamics. Replacement patterns following mortality indicate limited short-term persistence of predrought dominant tree species, highlighting the potential for major ecosystem reorganization in the coming decades. The great variability of the observed dynamics within and among species reinforces the primary influence of drought characteristics and ecosystem legacies, modulated by land use, management, and past disturbances, on ongoing drought-related species turnover and their potential implications for future forest biodiversity and ecosystem services.
AimMediterranean terrestrial ecosystems serve as reference laboratories for the investigation of ... more AimMediterranean terrestrial ecosystems serve as reference laboratories for the investigation of global change because of their transitional climate, the high spatiotemporal variability of their environmental conditions, a rich and unique biodiversity and a wide range of socio‐economic conditions. As scientific development and environmental pressures increase, it is increasingly necessary to evaluate recent progress and to challenge research priorities in the face of global change.LocationMediterranean terrestrial ecosystems.MethodsThis article revisits the research priorities proposed in a 1998 assessment.ResultsA new set of research priorities is proposed: (1) to establish the role of the landscape mosaic on fire‐spread; (2) to further research the combined effect of different drivers on pest expansion; (3) to address the interaction between drivers of global change and recent forest management practices; (4) to obtain more realistic information on the impacts of global change and...
ABSTRACT We investigated the effect of soil microclimate on the structure and functioning of soil... more ABSTRACT We investigated the effect of soil microclimate on the structure and functioning of soil microbial communities in a Mediterranean Holm-oak forest subjected to 10 years of partial rain exclusion manipulations, simulating average drought conditions expected in Mediterranean areas for the following decades. We applied a high throughput DNA pyrosequencing technique coupled to parallel measurements of microbial respiration (RH) and temperature sensitivity of microbial respiration (Q10). Some consistent changes in the structure of bacterial communities suggest a slow process of community shifts parallel to the trend towards oligotrophy in response to long-term droughts. However, the structure of bacterial communities was mainly determined by short-term environmental fluctuations associated with sampling date (winter, spring and summer) rather than long-term (10 years) shifts in baseline precipitation. Moreover, long-term drought did not exert any chronic effect on the functioning of soil microbial communities (RH and Q10), emphasizing the functional stability of these communities to this long-term but mild shifts in water availability. We hypothesize that the particular conditions of the Mediterranean climate with strong seasonal shifts in both temperature and soil water availability but also characterized by very extreme environmental conditions during summer, was acting as a strong force in community assembling, selecting phenotypes adapted to the semiarid conditions characterizing Mediterranean ecosystems. Relations of climate with the phylogenetic structure and overall diversity of the communities as well as the distribution of the individual responses of different lineages (genera) to climate confirmed our hypotheses, evidencing communities dominated by thermotolerant and drought-tolerant phenotypes.
Plant trait information is essential for understanding plant evolution, vegetation dynamics, and ... more Plant trait information is essential for understanding plant evolution, vegetation dynamics, and vegetation responses to disturbance and management. Furthermore, in Mediterranean ecosystems, changes in fire regime may be more relevant than direct changes in climatic conditions, making the knowledge of fire‐related traits especially important. Thus the purpose of this data set was to compile the most updated and comprehensive information on fire‐related traits for vascular plant species of the Mediterranean Basin, that is, traits related to plant persistence and regeneration after fire. Data were collected from an extensive literature review and from field and experimental observations. The data source is documented for each value. Since life history traits may vary spatially or with environmental conditions, we did not aggregate them by species; i.e., traits and species are repeated in different records if they were observed by different researchers and/or in different locations. Li...
Uno de los principales argumentos manejados por quienes sostienen que la ecología y los ecólogos ... more Uno de los principales argumentos manejados por quienes sostienen que la ecología y los ecólogos deben comprometerse más con la sociedad es la urgencia de los problemas ambientales que existen en nuestra sociedad (pérdida de biodiversidad, incendios forestales, política forestal, cambio climático, pérdida de hábitat, contaminación, etc.). Si los ecólogos dedican su esfuerzo y conocimiento a intentar entender el funcionamiento de los ecosistemas, éste debe ser puesto al servicio de la solución de los problemas ...
Current climatic trends involve both increasing temperatures and climatic variability, with extre... more Current climatic trends involve both increasing temperatures and climatic variability, with extreme events becoming more frequent. Increasing concern on extreme climatic events has triggered research on vegetation shifts. However, evidences of vegetation shifts resulting from these events are still relatively rare. Empirical evidence supports the existence of stabilizing processes minimizing and counteracting the effects of these events, reinforcing community resilience. We propose a demographic framework to understand this inertia to change based on the balance between adult mortality induced by the event and enhanced recruitment or adult survival after the event. The stabilizing processes potentially contributing to this compensation include attenuation of the adult mortality caused by the event, due to site quality variability, to tolerance, phenotypic variability, and plasticity at population level, and to facilitative interactions. Mortality compensation may also occur by incre...
Biological invasions by non-native or "exotic" plant species are widely recognised as a... more Biological invasions by non-native or "exotic" plant species are widely recognised as an important component of human-caused global environmental change, often resulting in a sig- nificant loss in the economic value, biological diversity and function of invaded ecosystems. A fundamental challenge posed by biological invasions has been the identification of characteristics associated with the invasion success of exotic species. We
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