Carolina Puerta-Piñero

European Commission. DG Joint Research Center · Food Security Unit /GTCAP Team

Ecological processes within forests provide vital ecosystem services to society, most of which depend on the persistence of tree cover that can be altered after the impact of a disturbance. The aim of the present study was to examine the role of seed dispersal and resprouting that mediate resilience to large fires and evaluate the economic costs th...

Land use changes and shifts in disturbance regimes (e.g. wildfires) are recognized worldwide as two of the major drivers of the current global change in terrestrial ecosystems. We expect that, in areas with large-scale land use changes, legacies from previous land uses persist and affect current ecosystem responses to climate-associated disturbance...

Tree deaths open gaps in closed-canopy forests, which allow light to reach the forest floor and promote seed germination and seedling establishment. Gap dependence of regeneration is an important axis of life history variation among forest plant species, and many studies have evaluated how plant species differ in seedling and sapling performance in...

Understanding how plant-animal interactions shape plant regeneration is traditionally examined at local scales. In contrast, landscape ecologists working at regional scales often have to infer the mechanisms underlying vegetation patterns. In this study, we empirically explored how landscape attributes (patch connectivity, size, shape, irradiance,...

Monográfico sobre Manglares de las Américas

Homenaje a Fernando González Bernáldez

Light is the most important physical variable that affects patterns of biomass allocation. A quantitative understanding of biomass allocation patterns is crucial to quantifying ecosystem dynamics and might have many practical uses in silviculture. In this research, we investigated the allocation of the aboveground biomass to leaves, branches, and bo...

The original version of this article was inadvertently published without the acknowledgements section.

El objetivo de este trabajo se centra en evaluar los impactos socioeconómicos y ambientales asociados a diferentes tipologías de manejo agrario en el área de influencia socioeconómica (AIS) del Parque Nacional de Sierra Nevada (PNSN), con el fín último de identificar estrategias de manejo y gestión sostenible tanto para el sector productivo, como p...

Afforestation programs in Spain were performed mainly between 1930-1970 decades. The study of the state and functioning of these anthropogenic forests has a wide debate among scientists and stakeholders. Forest inventories represent a crucial source of data to evaluate the long-term functioning of these forests at broad spatial scales. This article...

Los pasados días 29 y 30 de octubre 2015, se celebró en el Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid, España, la II edición de reunión anual de REDTROP, red temática en biología tropical de la Asociación Española de de Ecología Terrestre (AEET). Entre los dos días, y como en la ocasión anterior en Granada en octubre de 2014, hubo buen ambiente, ganas de colab...

Análisis espacial en plántulas de Euterpe edulis (Arecaceae) en el bosque Atlántico ¿Afecta la densidad de adultos a su distribución? Las actividad de frugívoros y dispersores de semillas determina la distribución de las plantas. Estudiamos la influencia de la dispersión de semillas en la distribución espacial del palmito (Euterpe edulis) en el bos...

Introducción El bosque mediterráneo actual es un ecosistema muy modificado por el hombre. Desde el Neolítico, grandes extensiones de bosque han sido destruidas para crear cultivos o pastiza-les, o enormemente transformadas en monte bajo para la obtención de carbón y leña. Por un lado, el fuego repetido ha afectado de manera importante bosques de pi...

SOSTENIBILIDAD EN ESPAÑA 2011 327 l Observatorio de la Sostenibilidad de España (OSE) ha preparado el presente capítulo espe-cial sobre bosques, en el marco de su Informe Sostenibilidad en España 2011, con ocasión de la celebración del Año Internacional de los Bosques. La Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas acordó en 2006 celebrar en 2011 este impo...

Resumen Los incendios forestales son recurrentes en los ecosistemas mediterráneos, y la extracción de la madera quemada es práctica común. La repoblación con encinas no suele realizarse mediante siembra debido a las altas tasas de depredación de bellotas. El objetivo de nuestro estudio fue investigar si diferentes tipos de manejo de la madera quema...

Artículo publicado en Open Access bajo los términos de Creative Commons attribution Non Comercial License. RESEÑAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS ecosistemas REVISTA CIENTÍFICA DE ECOLOGÍA Y MEDIO AMBIENTE ISSN 1697-2473 / Open access disponible en www.revistaecosistemas.net Tal y como señala la propia editorial, " la obra está dirigida a todas las personas intere...

Post-fire salvage logging is widely implemented worldwide, but there is an increasing concern about its potential impact on the ecosystem. Moreover, there is scant information about the effect of salvage logging on ecosystem processes mediated by species interactions. We manipulated a burnt pine forest to experimentally analyze the effect of burnt-...

Post-fire salvage logging (i.e. felling and removing burnt trees, often elimi-nating the remaining woody debris) is a practice routinely performed by forest managers worldwide. In Mediterranean-type ecosystems, salvage logging is considered a measure to reduce future reforestation costs, but this assumption remains largely untested. We made a cost...

Seed dispersal is qualitatively effective when it increases recruitment probability. A poorly studied factor likely affecting recruitment is the spatial distribution of dispersed seeds. Seed-caching animals are thought to disperse seeds in a way that reduces clumping and density to impede cache pilfering. Furthermore, dispersal might differ dependi...

The management of burnt wood after a fire may affect seed predation by vertebrates due to the change produced in habitat structure. We analyze the effect of burnt wood management on post-dispersal seed predation in the Holm oak. Three plots were established in a burnt forest, with three treatments per plot: (1) non-intervention (NI, all trees left...

There is an emerging interest in analyzing the effects of seed predation and its consequences for plant recruitment across the landscape. The main goals of this study were to assess (1) whether seed predation varies among spatial levels of the landscape, (2) whether there are differences between pre- and post-dispersal seed predation and, (3) wheth...

Resumen de Tesis Doctoral, Departamento de Ecología de la Universidad de Granada, Marzo 2008. Dirección: José María Gómez Reyes y Mario Díaz Esteban.

Resumen, Introducción, Discusión y Conclusiones escritas en español Tesis Univ. Granada. Departamento de Ecología. Leída el 28 de marzo de 2008

Fluctuating asymmetry (FA), random nondirectional deviations from perfect symmetry, has been proposed as a useful indicator of environmental stress. Nevertheless, FA acts as a nonspecific indicator of stress; thus, factorial designs are needed to disentangle which of the factors may induce FA. We used an experimental approach in which seedlings of...

In this study we assessed the effectiveness of rodents as dispersers of Quercus ilex in a patchy landscape in southeastern Spain. We experimentally followed the fates of 3,200 marked and weighed acorns from dispersal through the time of seedling emergence over three years. Rodents handled about 99% of acorns, and dispersed 67% and cached 7.4% of th...

The Mediterranean region emerges highly heterogeneous at every spatio-temporal scale. Key species shape a mosaic of patches (landscape units) composed of different microhabitats. Within these ecosystems irradiance appears as one of the most changing factors affecting communities’ dynamic. However, the impact of irradiance on the species performance...

We illustrate experimentally the importance of species-specificity in the soil-mediated interactions among plants inhabiting heterogeneous landscapes. Topsoils from nine microhabitats were used to experimentally grow Quercus ilex acorns in the laboratory. We recorded germination, emergence, acorn left and seedling performance (HGR, biomass and root...

1. This paper explores the idea that functional heterogeneity (variability of a system property affecting ecological processes) is only a fraction of the available structural heterogeneity (variability of a property measured without reference to ecological effects) caused by non-random propagule dispersal. We report the effect of acorn dispersal by...