Beatriz Gozalo

• Technician at Rey Juan Carlos University

Increases in the abundance of woody species have been reported to affect the provisioning of ecosystem services in drylands worldwide. However, it is virtually unknown how multiple biotic and abiotic drivers, such as climate, grazing, and fire, interact to determine woody dominance across global drylands. We conducted a standardized field survey in...

Earth harbours an extraordinary plant phenotypic diversity¹ that is at risk from ongoing global changes2,3. However, it remains unknown how increasing aridity and livestock grazing pressure—two major drivers of global change4–6—shape the trait covariation that underlies plant phenotypic diversity1,7. Here we assessed how covariation among 20 chemic...

Mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC) constitutes a major fraction of global soil carbon and is assumed less sensitive to climate than particulate organic carbon (POC) due to protection by minerals. Despite its importance for long-term carbon storage, the response of MAOC to changing climates in drylands, which cover more than 40% of the global...

Perennial plants create productive and biodiverse hotspots, known as fertile islands, beneath their canopies. These hotspots largely determine the structure and functioning of drylands worldwide. Despite their ubiquity, the factors controlling fertile islands under conditions of contrasting grazing by livestock, the most prevalent land use in dryla...

Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of short-term (~1 y) drought events—the most common duration of drought—globally. Yet the impact of this intensification of drought on ecosystem functioning remains poorly resolved. This is due in part to the widely disparate approaches ecologists have employed to study drought, variation in t...

Soil is one of the largest reservoirs for antibiotic resistance in the world. Bacteria can carry antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and share them via mechanisms like mobile genetic elements. Antibiotic resistance in the soil microbes impacts microbial community dynamics and it can spread to human and animal pathogens. Despite this importance, this...

Background Little is known about the global distribution and environmental drivers of key microbial functional traits such as antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Soils are one of Earth’s largest reservoirs of ARGs, which are integral for soil microbial competition, and have potential implications for plant and human health. Yet, their diversity and...

Grazing represents the most extensive use of land worldwide. Yet its impacts on ecosystem services remain uncertain because pervasive interactions between grazing pressure, climate, soil properties, and biodiversity may occur but have never been addressed simultaneously. Using a standardized survey at 98 sites across six continents, we show that in...

Grazing represents the most extensive use of land worldwide. Yet its impacts on ecosystem services remain uncertain because pervasive interactions between grazing pressure, climate, soil properties, and biodiversity may occur but have never been addressed simultaneously. Using a standardized survey at 98 sites across six continents, we show that in...

Grazing by domestic livestock is both the main land use across drylands worldwide and a major desertification and global change driver. The ecological consequences of this key human activity have been studied for decades, and there is a wealth of information on its impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem processes. However, most field assessments of...

Purpose Biocrust communities, which are important regulators of multiple ecosystem functions in drylands, are highly sensitive to climate change. There is growing evidence of the negative impacts of warming on the performance of biocrust constituents like lichens in the field. Here, we aim to understand the physiological basis behind this pattern....

Drylands are important reservoirs of soil phosphorus (P) at the global scale, although large uncertainties remain regarding how climate change will affect P cycling in these ecosystems. Biocrust‐forming lichens are important regulators of abiotic and biotic processes occurring in the soil surface, including nutrient availability and redistribution,...

Background Little is known about the global distribution and environmental drivers of key microbial functional traits such as antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Soils are one of Earth’s largest reservoirs of ARGs, which are integral for soil microbial competition, and have potential implications for plant and human health. Yet, their diversity and...

Ongoing global warming and alterations in rainfall patterns driven by climate change are known to have large impacts on biogeochemical cycles, particularly on drylands. In addition, the global increase in atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition can destabilize primary productivity in terrestrial ecosystems, and phosphorus (P) may become the most limiti...

Photoautotrophic soil cyanobacteria play essential ecological roles and are known to exhibit large changes in their diversity and abundance throughout early succession. However, much less is known about how and why soil cyanobacterial communities change as soil develops over centuries and millennia, and the effects that vegetation have on such comm...

Drylands cover ~41% of the terrestrial surface. In these water-limited ecosystems, soil moisture contributes to multiple hydrological processes and is a crucial determinant of the activity and performance of above-and belowground organisms and of the ecosystem processes that rely on them. thus, an accurate characterisation of the temporal dynamics...

Soil cyanobacteria play essential ecological roles and are known to experience large changes in their diversity and abundance throughout early succession. However, much less is known about how and why soil cyanobacterial communities change as soil develops from centuries to millennia, and the effects of aboveground vegetation on these communities....

Despite the high relevance of communities dominated by lichens, mosses and cyanobacteria living on the soil surface (biocrusts) for ecosystem functioning in drylands, no study to date has investigated the decomposition of biocrust-forming lichen litter in situ. Thus, we do not know whether the drivers of its decomposition are similar to those for p...

Significance Identifying species assemblages that boost the provision of multiple ecosystem functions simultaneously (multifunctionality) is crucial to undertake effective restoration actions aiming at simultaneously promoting biodiversity and high multifunctionality in a changing world. By disentangling the effect of multiple traits on multifuncti...

Biocrusts are key drivers of ecosystem functioning in drylands, yet our understanding of how climate change will affect the chemistry of biocrust‐forming species and their impacts on carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling is still very limited. Using a manipulative experiment conducted with common biocrust‐forming lichens with distinct morphology and...

The availability of metallic nutrients in dryland soils, many of which are essential for the metabolism of soil organisms and vascular plants, may be altered due to climate change-driven increases in aridity. Biocrusts, soil surface communities dominated by lichens, bryophytes and cyanobacteria, are ecosystem engineers known to exert critical funct...

Soil carbon losses to the atmosphere through soil respiration are expected to rise with ongoing temperature increases, but available evidence from mesic biomes suggests that such response disappears after a few years of experimental warming. However, there is lack of empirical basis for these temporal dynamics in soil respiration responses, and for...

Despite the high relevance of communities dominated by lichens, mosses and cyanobacteria living on the soil surface (biocrusts) for ecosystem functioning in drylands worldwide, no study to date has investigated the decomposition of biocrust-forming lichen litter in situ. Thus, we do not know whether the drivers of its decomposition are similar to t...

Multiple ecosystem functions need to be considered simultaneously to manage and protect the several ecosystem services that are essential to people and their environments. Despite this, cost effective, tangible, relatively simple and globally relevant methodologies to monitor in situ soil multifunctionality, that is, the provision of multiple ecosy...

Soil carbon losses to the atmosphere through soil respiration are expected to rise with ongoing temperature increases, but available evidence from mesic biomes suggests that such response disappears after a few years of experimental warming. However, there is lack of empirical basis for these temporal dynamics in soil respiration responses, and of...

Despite their importance, how plant communities and soil microorganisms interact to determine the capacity of ecosystems to provide multiple functions simultaneously (multifunctionality) under climate change is poorly known. We conducted a common garden experiment using grassland species to evaluate how plant functional structure and soil microbial...

A positive soil carbon (C)−climate feedback is embedded into the climatic models of the IPCC. However, recent global syntheses indicate that the temperature sensitivity of soil respiration (RS) in drylands, the largest biome on Earth, is actually lower in warmed than in control plots. Consequently, soil C losses with future warming are expected to...

Increases in aridity forecasted by the end of this century will decouple the cycles of soil carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in drylands—the largest terrestrial biome on Earth. Little is known, however, about how changes in aridity simultaneously affect the C:N:P stoichiometry of organisms across multiple trophic levels. It is imperative...

Supporting Information of the paper: Warming reduces the cover, richness and evenness of lichen-dominated biocrusts but promotes moss growth: Insights from an eight-year experiment

Despite the important role that biocrust communities play in maintaining ecosystem structure and functioning in drylands world-wide, few studies have evaluated how climate change will affect them. � Using data from an 8-yr-old manipulative field experiment located in central Spain, we evaluated how warming, rainfall exclusion and their combination...

Soil surface communities dominated by mosses, lichens and cyanobacteria (biocrusts) are common between vegetation patches in drylands worldwide, and are known to affect soil wetting and drying after rainfall events. While ongoing climate change is already warming and changing rainfall patterns of drylands in many regions, little is known on how the...

The relationship between soil microbial communities and the resistance of multiple ecosystem functions linked to C, N and P cycling (multifunctionality resistance) to global change has never been assessed globally in natural ecosystems. We collected soils from 59 dryland ecosystems worldwide to investigate the importance of microbial communities as...

Soil surface communities dominated by mosses, lichens and cyanobacteria (biocrusts) cover most of the soil surface between vegetation patches in drylands worldwide, and are known to affect soil wetting and drying after rainfall events. While ongoing climate change is already warming and changing rainfall patterns of drylands in many regions, little...

Significance Climate change is increasing the degree of aridity in drylands, which occupy 41% of Earth’s surface and support 38% of its population. Soil bacteria and fungi are largely responsible for key ecosystem services, including soil fertility and climate regulation, yet their responses to changes in aridity are poorly understood. Using a fiel...

Aims Climate and human impacts are changing the nitrogen ( N ) inputs and losses in terrestrial ecosystems. However, it is largely unknown how these two major drivers of global change will simultaneously influence the N cycle in drylands, the largest terrestrial biome on the planet. We conducted a global observational study to evaluate how aridity...

The increase in aridity predicted with climate change will have a negative impact on the multiple functions and services (multifunctionality) provided by dryland ecosystems worldwide. In these ecosystems, soil communities dominated by mosses, lichens and cyanobacteria (biocrusts) play a key role in supporting multifunctionality. However, whether bi...

Soil communities dominated by lichens and mosses (biocrusts) play key roles in maintaining ecosystem structure and functioning in drylands worldwide. However, few studies have explicitly evaluated how climate change-induced impacts on biocrusts affect associated soil microbial communities. We report results from a field experiment conducted in a se...

Plant-plant interactions are driven by environmental conditions, evolutionary relationships (ER) and the functional traits of the plants involved. However, studies addressing the relative importance of these drivers are rare, but crucial to improve our predictions of the effects of plant-plant interactions on plant communities and of how they respo...

Geographic, climatic, and soil factors are major drivers of plant beta diversity, but their importance for dryland plant communities is poorly known. This study aims to: i) characterize patterns of beta diversity in global drylands, ii) detect common environmental drivers of beta diversity, and iii) test for thresholds in environmental conditions d...

Climate change will raise temperatures and modify precipitation patterns in drylands worldwide, affecting their structure and functioning. Despite the recognized importance of soil communities dominated by mosses, lichens and cyanobacteria (biocrusts) as a driver of nutrient cycling in drylands, little is known on how biocrusts will modulate the re...

The importance of biological soil crusts (biocrusts) for the biogeochemistry of drylands is widely recognized. However, there are significant gaps in our knowledge about how climate change will affect these organisms and the processes depending on them. We conducted a manipulative full factorial experiment in two representative dryland ecosystems f...

Plant-plant interactions are driven by environmental conditions, evolutionary relationships (ER) and the functional traits of the plants involved. However, studies addressing the relative importance of these drivers are rare, but crucial to improve our predictions of the effects of plant-plant interactions on plant communities and of how they respo...

Aim Geographical, climatic and soil factors are major drivers of plant beta diversity, but their importance for dryland plant communities is poorly known. The aim of this study was to: (1) characterize patterns of beta diversity in global drylands; (2) detect common environmental drivers of beta diversity; and (3) test for thresholds in environment...

The biogeochemical cycles of carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are interlinked by primary production, respiration and decomposition in terrestrial ecosystems1. It has been suggested that the C, N and P cycles could become uncoupled under rapid climate change because of the different degrees of control exerted on the supply of these elemen...

The biogeochemical cycles of carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are interlinked by primary production, respiration and decomposition in terrestrial ecosystems. It has been suggested that the C, N and P cycles could become uncoupled under rapid climate change because of the different degrees of control exerted on the supply of these element...

Dryland ecosystems account for ~27% of global soil organic carbon (C) reserves, yet it is largely unknown how climate change will impact C cycling and storage in these areas. In drylands, soil C concentrates at the surface, making it particularly sensitive to the activity of organisms inhabiting the soil uppermost levels, such as communities domina...

While much is known about the factors that control each component of the terrestrial nitrogen (N) cycle, it is less clear how these factors affect total N availability, the sum of organic and inorganic forms potentially available to microorganisms and plants. This is particularly true for N-poor ecosystems such as drylands, which are highly sensiti...

Pearsońs relationships between organic (DON and amino acids) and inorganic (ammonium and nitrate) N forms with aridity for both Stipa tenassicima (STIPA) and Bare soil (BS) microsites. Every data point is the average of five soil samples. Significance levels are as follows: *p<0.05, **p<0.01 and ***p<0.001. Ammonium, nitrate and DON were measured a...

Pearson correlations coefficients. between available N and climatic (aridity), abiotic (pH; SAC: sand content), plant (CBA: coverage of bare ground; CHE: coverage of Stipa tenacissima; PA: plant patch area; API: Average plant patch interdistance; NP: number of plant patches per 10 m of transect) and nutrient (Organic-C; MIN; potential net mineraliz...

Pearson correlations coefficients. between the different climatic (aridity), abiotic (pH; SAC: % of sand content), plant (CBA: % of coverage of bare ground; CHE: % of coverage of Stipa tenacissima; PA: plant patch area [m2]; API: Average plant patch interdistance [m]; NP: number of plant patches per 10 m of transect) and nutrient (Organic-C [%]; MI...

Summary results of the semi-parametric PERMANOVA analyses carried out with organic carbon. PERMANOVA uses permutation tests to obtain p values, does not rely on the assumptions of traditional parametric ANOVA, and can handle experimental designs such as employed here (1). The model used evaluated the effects of plot (PL as random factor) and micros...

Location, climatic, physical and main soil chemical characteristics in the studied sites. MAT = Mean annual temperature; MAP = Mean annual precipitation; Stipa = coverage of Stipa. (DOC)

Relationships between organic (DON and amino acids) and inorganic (ammonium and nitrate) N forms with total available N for both Stipa tenassicima (STIPA) and Bare soil (BS) microsites. Every data point is the average of five soil samples. Significance levels are as follows: *p<0.05, **p<0.01 and ***p<0.001. Ammonium, nitrate and DON were measured...

Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are specialized communities dominated by mosses, lichens, liverworts, cyanobacteria, and other organisms that may constitute as much as 70% of the living cover in dryland ecosystems. These organisms not only fix CO2 from the atmosphere, but also control the small-scale spatio-temporal soil CO2 fluxes in the ecosystems...

Experiments suggest that biodiversity enhances the ability of ecosystems to maintain multiple functions, such as carbon storage, productivity, and the buildup of nutrient pools (multifunctionality). However, the relationship between biodiversity and multifunctionality has never been assessed globally in natural ecosystems. We report here on a globa...