Ana Meijide

• Professor
• Professor at University of Bonn

Cover crops are acclaimed for enhancing the environmental sustainability of agricultural practices by aiding in carbon (C) sequestration and reducing losses of soil mineral nitrogen (SMN) after harvest. Yet, their influence on nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions—a potent greenhouse gas—presents a complex challenge, with findings varying across different...

Global demand for vegetable oil and high oil palm yield have driven the rapid expansion of oil palm plantations in tropical countries. The research literature widely recognizes the effects of forest cover conversion into oil palm on biodiversity, deforestation, and carbon dynamics. However, research on the ecohydrological impacts of oil palm planta...

The preservation of nutrient capital, soil fertility, and carbon (C) sequestration capacity in Mediterranean olive groves requires evaluation of agricultural practices beyond short-term productivity. We aim to contribute with a mechanistic understanding on the effects that the preservation of herbaceous cover and the use of chemical fertilizers hav...

Rubber plantations are an economically viable land-use type that occupies large swathes of land in Southeast Asia that have undergone conversion from native forest to intensive plantation forestry. Such land-use change has a strong impact on carbon, energy, and water fluxes in ecosystems, and uncertainties exist in the modeling of future land-use c...

The limited availability of phosphorus (P) in soils causes a major constraint in the productivity of potatoes, which requires increased knowledge of plant adaptation responses in this condition. In this study, six potato cultivars, namely, Agria, Lady Claire, Milva, Lilly, Sieglinde, and Verdi, were assessed for their responses on plant growth, lea...

Forest fires can cause great changes in the composition, structure and functioning of forest ecosystems. We stud- ied the effects of a fire that occurred >50 years ago in a temperate rainforest that caused flooding conditions in a Placic Andosol to evaluate how long these effects last; we hypothesized that the effects of fire on the soil green- hou...

Oil palm plantations have rapidly expanded over the last 30 years, and now occupy 10% of the world’s permanent cropland. The growth of one of the world’s most efficient and versatile crop has alleviated poverty and increased food and energy security, but not without side effects. Losses of forest biodiversity hits the news. Although equally importa...

The potential of palm-oil biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared with fossil fuels is increasingly questioned. So far, no measurement-based GHG budgets were available, and plantation age was ignored in Life Cycle Analyses (LCA). Here, we conduct LCA based on measured CO2, CH4 and N2O fluxes in young and mature Indonesian oil pal...

Wetlands are crucial ecosystems modulating climate change due to their great potential to capture carbon dioxide (CO2), emit methane (CH4), and regulate local climate through evapotranspiration (ET). Common reed wetlands are particularly interesting given their high productivity, abundance, and highly efficient internal gas‐transport mechanism. How...

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in 2015 was one of the strongest observed in almost 20 years and set the stage for a severe drought and the emergence of widespread fires and related smoke emission over large parts of Southeast Asia. In the tropical lowlands of Sumatra, which were heavily affected by the drought and haze, large areas of trop...

By mediating evapotranspiration processes, plant canopies play an important role in the terrestrial water cycle and regional climate. Substantial uncertainties exist in modeling canopy water interception and related hydrological processes due to rainfall forcing frequency selection and varying canopy traits. Here we design a new time interpolation...

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in 2015 was one of the strongest observed in almost 20 years and set the stage for a severe drought and the emergence of widespread fires and related smoke emission over large parts of Southeast Asia. In the tropical lowlands of Sumatra, which were heavily affected by the drought and haze, large areas of trop...

Land-use change has a strong impact on carbon, energy and water fluxes and its effect is particularly pronounced in tropical regions. Uncertainties exist in the prediction of future land-use change impacts on these fluxes by land surface models due to scarcity of suitable measured data for parametrization and poor representation of key biogeochemic...

p>Oil palm is one important agricultural commodity that has high economic value. Oil palm productivity is significantly influenced by its water use (needs). Measurement and estimation of oil palm evapotranspiration is needed for determination of its water needs. Various methods are available and this study compare three methods, consisting of aerod...

p>Oil palm is one important agricultural commodity that has high economic value. Oil palm productivity is significantly influenced by its water use (needs). Measurement and estimation of oil palm evapotranspiration is needed for determination of its water needs. Various methods are available and this study compare three methods, consisting of aerod...

Given their ability to provide food, raw material and alleviate poverty, oil palm (OP) plantations are driving significant losses of biodiversity-rich tropical forests, fuelling a heated debate on ecosystem degradation and conservation. However, while OP-induced carbon emissions and biodiversity losses have received significant attention, OP water...

Oil palm plantations are expanding vastly in Jambi, resulted in altered surface roughness and turbulence characteristics, which may influence exchange of heat and mass. Micrometeorological measurements above oil palm canopy were conducted for the period 2013–2015. The oil palms were 12.5 years old, canopy height 13 meters and 1.5 years old canopy h...

Oil palm and rubber expansion is a main driver of the widespread deforestation of tropical rainforests taking place in South-East Asia, particularly in Indonesia. The replacement of forests with monoculture plantations of rubber and oil palm reduces biodiversity and carbon pools but also modifies canopy structure, which is an important determinant...

Indonesia is currently one of the regions with the highest transformation rate of land surface worldwide related to the expansion of oil palm plantations and other cash crops replacing forests on large scales. Land cover changes, which modify land surface properties, have a direct effect on the land surface temperature (LST), a key driver for many...

The conversion of tropical rainforest to agricultural systems such as oil palm alters biodiversity across a large range of inter- acting taxa and trophic levels. Yet, it remains unclear how direct and cascading effects of land-use change simultaneously drive ecological shifts. Combining data from a multi-taxon research initiative in Sumatra, Indone...

The expansion of rubber cultivation in Southeast Asia raises concerns about the integrity of the hydrological cycle. From mainland Asia, high evapotranspiration from rubber plantations was reported. Our study was conducted in the Sumatran lowlands (Indonesia), where rubber is grown by small-holders under maritime climate. We assessed patterns of wa...

Indonesia is currently one of the regions with the highest transformation rate of the land surface worldwide due to the expansion of oil palm plantations and other cash crops replacing forests on large scales. Land cover changes, which modify land surface properties, have a direct effect on the land surface temperature (LST), a key driver for many...

Oil palm is rapidly expanding, particularly in Indonesia, but there is still very limited information on water and energy fluxes in oil palm plantations, and on how those are affected by varying environmental conditions or plantation age. In our study, we measured turbulent fluxes of sensible (H) and latent (LE) heat and gross primary productivity...

Oil palm and rubber plantations extend over large areas and encompass heterogeneous site conditions. In periods of high rainfall, plants in valleys and at riparian sites are more prone to flooding than plants at elevated topographic positions. We asked to what extent topographic position and flooding affect oil palm and rubber tree water use patter...

Revisión de las principales estrategias de reducción de GEI en sistemas agrícolas mediterráneos, tanto agronómicas como estructurales. Evaluación de barreras y oportunidades de implementación.

Oil Palm (Elaeis guinensis Jacq) has a unique morphological characteristics, in particular it has a uniform canopy. As the plant become older, its canopy coverage will completely cover the surface and influence characteristics of its microclimate. Sensible heat flux estimation of oil palm plantation could be used to identify the contribution of oil...

Deforestation and land-use changes are ongoing problems for rain forests in Indonesia. The conversion of forests to monocultures of rubber and oil palm plantations reduces not only biodiversity and carbon pools but also affects canopy structure, which is an important determinant of microclimate. There is, however, a lack of quantitative information...

Oil Palm (Elaeis guinensis Jacq) has a unique morphological characteristics, in particular it has a uniform canopy. As the plant become older, its canopy coverage will completely cover the surface and influence characteristics of its microclimate. Sensible heat flux estimation of oil palm plantation could be used to identify the contribution of oil...

An integrated assessment of the potential of different management practices for mitigating specific components of the total GHG budget (N2O and CH4 emissions and C sequestration) of Mediterranean agrosystems was performed in this study. Their suitability regarding both yield and environmental (e.g. nitrate leaching and ammonia volatilization) susta...

Smallholder-dominated agricultural mosaic landscapes are highlighted as model production systems that deliver both economic and ecological goods in tropical agricultural landscapes, but trade-offs underlying current land-use dynamics are poorly known. Here, using the most comprehensive quan-tification of land-use change and associated bundles of ec...

Primer pair sequences for plants, bacteria, and archaea

Supplementary Figures 1 - 9, Supplementary Tables 1 - 5, Supplementary Note 1 and Supplementary References

Land-use change is the main driver of biodiversity loss in the tropics worldwide. Lowland rainforest regions in Southeast Asia are experiencing particularly high rates of large-scale conversion of forests and agroforests into monocultural tree plantations including oil palm and rubber with devastating effects on forest-dependent species. Canopy-dwe...

Oil palm plantations have expanded rapidly in recent decades. This large-scale land-use change has had great ecological, economic, and social impacts on both the areas converted to oil palm and their surroundings. However, research on the impacts of oil palm cultivation is scattered and patchy, and no clear overview exists. We address this gap thro...

Rice paddy fields are one of the largest anthropogenic sources of methane (CH4), the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) after carbon dioxide (CO2). For this reason most studies on the GHG budget in these agricultural systems focus on the evaluation of CH4 production. However, these systems also exchange other GHGs with the atm...

Conversions of natural ecosystems, e.g., from rain forests to managed plantations, result in significant changes in the hydrological cycle including periodic water scarcity. In Indonesia, large areas of forest were lost and extensive oil palm plantations were established over the last decades. We conducted a combined social and environmental study...

Tropical lowland rainforests are increasingly threatened by the expansion of agriculture and the extraction of natural resources. In Jambi Province, Indonesia, the interdisciplinary EFForTS project focuses on the ecological and socio-economic dimensions of rainforest conversion to jungle rubber agroforests and monoculture plantations of rubber and...

Disturbances caused by the conversion of rain forests into agricultural systems provide an opportunity for the expansion of Invasive Plant Species (IPS). Bukit Duabelas National Park is one of the few remaining lowland forests in Jambi Province (Sumatera, Indonesia). The surrounding areas up to the national park borders have already been converted...

Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) plantations cover large and continuously increasing areas of humid tropical lowlands. Landscapes dominated by oil palms usually consist of a mosaic of mono-cultural, homogeneous stands of varying age, which may be heterogeneous in their water use characteristics. However, studies on the water use characteristics o...

Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) plantations cover large and continuously increasing areas of humid tropical lowlands. Landscapes dominated by oil palms usually consist of a mosaic of mono-cultural, homogeneous stands of varying age, which may be heterogeneous in their water use characteristics. However, studies on the water use characteristics o...

Significance Wetlands are unique ecosystems because they are in general sinks for carbon dioxide and sources of methane. Their climate footprint therefore depends on the relative sign and magnitude of the land–atmosphere exchange of these two major greenhouse gases. This work presents a synthesis of simultaneous measurements of carbon dioxide and m...

Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) water use was assessed by sap flux density measurements with the aim to establish the method and derive water-use characteristics. Thermal dissipation probes were inserted into leaf petioles of mature oil palms. In the laboratory, we tested our set-up against gravimetric measurements and derived new parameters for...

Drip-fertigated systems have variable distributions of water and nutrients in the soil, which influence soil microbial activity. Because there is a lack of data on greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes for these systems, a field experiment comparing drip irrigation systems (fertigated and non-fertigated) was carried out in a melon crop. For the fertigated tr...

Among the mitigation strategies to prevent nitrogen (N) losses from ureic fertilizers, urease inhibitors (UIs) have been demonstrated to promote high N use efficiency by reducing ammonia (NH3) volatilization. In the last few years, some field experiments have also shown its effectiveness in reducing nitrous oxide (N2O) losses from fertilized soils...

This research is funded by BOPTN-IPB 2013 and implementation was conducted in collaboration with CRC990 EFForts Project. Research Aims includes: 1. Identification of biophysical changes (surface roughness, microclimate, energy budget, heat and water fluxes) of land transformation from forest to Oil Palm using Remote Sensing and micrometeorological...

In this study, we compare annual fluxes of methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and soil respiratory carbon dioxide (CO2) measured at nine European peatlands (n = 4) and shrublands (n = 5). The sites range from northern Sweden to Spain, covering a span in mean annual air temperature from 0 to 16 °C, and in annual precipitation from 300 to 1300 mm yr-...

In this study, we compare annual fluxes of methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O) and soil respiratory carbon dioxide (CO₂) measured at nine European peatlands ( n = 4) and shrublands ( n = 5). The sites range from northern Sweden to Spain, covering a span in mean annual air temperature from 0 to 16 °C, and in annual pr...

Rice paddy fields are one of the greatest anthropogenic sources of methane (CH 4), the third most important greenhouse gas after water vapour and carbon dioxide. In agricultural fields, CH 4 is usually measured with the closed chamber technique, resulting in discontinuous series of measurements performed over a limited area, that generally do not p...

Rice paddy fields are one of the greatest anthropogenic sources of methane (CH₄), the third most important greenhouse gas after water vapour and carbon dioxide. In agricultural fields, CH₄ is usually measured with the closed chamber technique, resulting in discontinuous series of measurements performed over a limited area, tha...

The present study determined the influence of initial moisture conditions on the production and consumption of nitrous oxide (N2O) during denitrification and on the isotopic fingerprint of soil-emitted N2O. Sieved arable soil was pre-incubated at two different moisture contents: pre-wet at 75% and pre-dry at 20% water-filled pore space. After wetti...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the pattern of nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) fluxes, and leaching losses of nitrate (NO3−) and dissolved organic C (DOC), during a fallow–onion crop–fallow cycle in a Mediterranean area. The importance of the fallow (intercrop) period and the type of fertilizer were also evaluated. Goat and chicken manu...

The aim of our research was to obtain information on the isotopic fingerprint of nitrous oxide (N2O) associated with its production and consumption during denitrification. An arable soil was preincubated at high moisture content and subsequently amended with glucose (400 kg C ha−1) and KNO3 (80 kg N ha−1) and kept at 85% water-filled pore space. Tw...

Fertilizer and irrigation management are two of the most important factors which directly influence nitrification and denitrification processes from agricultural soils and, therefore, emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitric oxide (NO). To date, the effect of combining organic fertilizer (applied before planting) with a drip irrigation system (D...

A recent study compares the effects of organic, 'natural' fertilisers, such as compost, with mineral, synthetic fertilisers, such as urea, on N 2 O emissions from Mediterranean soil. It suggests that there is little difference between the fertilisers, but that pig slurry offers the best overall balance in terms of emissions and crop yield. Nitrous...

Contradictory findings can be found in the literature regarding the effects of applying organic instead of mineral fertilizers on the associated emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitric oxide (NO). The main aim of this experiment was to study the effect on these emissions of applying mineral or organic fertilizers to a non-irrigated crop under M...

A field experiment was carried out in a non-irrigated barley crop (Hordeum vulgare L. cv Bornova) with the aims of evaluating the effects of applying organic and inorganic fertilizers on soil carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) fluxes and assessing the residual effect of these fertilizers after the first rainfall events of autumn. Both soil CO2...

Organic fertilizers may differ greatly in composition and as a result there may also be differences in nitrogen oxides emissions following their application to soils. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of mineral and organic N fertilizers on the nitrification and denitrification processes, and consequently on N2O and NO emissions....