Gerardo Moreno

University of Extremadura | UNEX · Forest Research Group

Semi-arid ecosystems dominate variability and trend of the terrestrial carbon sink. They are sensitive to environmental changes following anthropogenic influence, such as an altered ratio of nitrogen (N) to phosphorus (P) due to increasing N deposition. Semi-arid savannas with different vegetation compositions have complex carbon dynamics, and thei...

The evergreen oaks Quercus ilex and Quercus suber are exposed to widespread Phytophthora infestation in natural forests. To restore diseased forests, deploying trees less susceptible to combined stress is the most promising approach. We aimed to determine whether drought affects the susceptibility of Q. ilex and Q. suber seedlings to Phytophthora c...

All ecosystems contain both sources and sinks for atmospheric carbon (C). A change in their balance of net and gross ecosystem carbon uptake, ecosystem‐scale carbon use efficiency (CUE ECO ), is a change in their ability to buffer climate change. However, anthropogenic nitrogen (N) deposition is increasing N availability, potentially shifting terre...

Current agricultural practices in Europe are increasingly aggravating societal and environmental safety concerns. This creates social and regulatory pressures on farmers, which can lead to declining material and social status of farmers, farmer discontent, and anti-regulation protests. These tensions are rooted in conflicting value systems for agri...

It is known from arid and semi-arid ecosystems that atmospheric water vapor can directly be adsorbed by the soil matrix. Soil water vapor adsorption was typically neglected and only recently received attention because of improvements in measurement techniques. One technique rarely explored for the measurement of soil water vapor adsorption is eddy...

Remote sensing capabilities to monitor evergreen broadleaved vegetation are limited by the low temporal variability in the greenness signal. With canopy greenness computed from digital repeat photography (PhenoCam), we investigated how canopy greenness related to seasonal changes in leaf age and traits as well as variation of trees’ water fluxes (c...

In anthropic savanna ecosystems from the Iberian Peninsula (i.e. dehesa), complex interactions between climate change, pathogen outbreaks and human land use are presumed to be behind the observed increase in holm oak decline. These environmental disturbances alter the plant–soil microbial continuum, which can destabilize the ecological balance that...

It is known from arid and semi-arid ecosystems that atmospheric water vapor is directly adsorbed by the soil matrix during the night. Soil water vapor adsorption was typically neglected and only recently got attention because of improvements in measurement techniques. One technique rarely explored is eddy covariance (EC). EC nighttime measurements...

Forest decline events have increased worldwide over the last decades being holm oak (Quercus ilex L.) one of the tree species with the most worrying trends across Europe. Since this is one of the tree species with the southernmost distribution within the European continent, its vulnerability to climate change is a phenomenon of enormous ecological...

Agricultural systems face several challenges that threaten their capacity to feed the world while maintaining a healthy and functional environment. Climate change, together with soil degradation, biodiversity loss, resource scarcity and invasive species, is a major threat to agricultural systems worldwide. In this context, new practices have been p...

The oversowing of legume-rich mixtures is a management practice gaining importance in Mediterranean silvopastoral farms due to enhanced forage production, quality, and ecosystem service provision. However, the oversowing of legume species can be expensive in silvopastoral farms due to the high cost of legume seeds and seeding operations and low per...

Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) is a grazing system which combines intensive, rapid grazing livestock rotation with relatively short grazing periods and long recovery time after grazing. The study assesses, under Mediterranean silvopastoral systems, changes in pasture phenology and spatial variability after adopting the AMP under contrasting land cove...

Context Here we develop a practical framework (Mosaico) and report a real-world example of early implementation of a Fire-Smart Territory (FST) in Sierra de Gata-Las Hurdes region of central Spain. Objectives We aimed to assess the impact of landscape changes induced by Local Land Managers (LLM; indirect prevention) on simulated fire spread under...

ContextIberian wood-pastures (dehesas) constitute important habitats for flower-visiting insects, thus supporting the delivery of essential ecosystem services. However, dehesas have been experiencing increasing degradation either by farming intensification or abandonment.Objectives We assess if alternative management strategies linked to ecological...

Forest decline events have increased worldwide over the last decades, being holm oak one of the tree species with the most worrying trends across Europe. Previous research identified drought and soil pathogens as the main causes behind holm oak decline. However, despite tree health loss is a multifactorial phenomenon where abiotic and biotic factor...

Context Here we develop a practical framework (Mosaico) and report a real-world example of early implementation of a Fire-Smart Territory (FST) in Sierra de Gata-Las Hurdes region of central Spain. Objectives We aimed to assess the impact of landscape changes induced by local land managers (indirect prevention) on simulated fire spread under differ...

The input of liquid water to terrestrial ecosystems is composed of rain and non-rainfall water (NRW). The latter comprises dew, fog, and the adsorption of atmospheric vapor on soil particle surfaces. Although NRW inputs can be relevant to support ecosystem functioning in seasonally dry ecosystems, they are understudied, being relatively small, and...

Climate change will pose a major threat to food supply worldwide. Agroforestry has been proposed as an effective approach to minimize its effects on crops. However, to design sustainable and productive agroforestry systems, net responses of crops to trees need to be clarified, particularly in regions where competitive interactions will outweigh fac...

It has been shown that the COVID-19 pandemic affected some agricultural systems more than others, and even within geographic regions, not all farms were affected to the same extent. To build resilience of agricultural systems to future shocks, it is key to understand which farms were affected and why. In this study, we examined farmers' perceived r...

Remote sensing capabilities to monitor evergreen broadleaved vegetation are limited by the low temporal variability in the greenness signal. With canopy greenness computed from digital repeat photography (PhenoCam), we investigated how canopy greenness related to seasonal changes in leaf age and traits as well as variation of trees’ water fluxes (c...

Context Iberian wood-pastures (dehesas) constitute important habitats for flower-visiting insects, thus supporting the delivery of essential ecosystem services. However, dehesas have been experiencing increasing degradation either by farming intensification or abandonment. Objectives We assess if alternative management strategies linked to ecologi...

The aim of this paper is the estimation of functional diversity (FD) of the herbaceous stratum in a ‘dehesa’ ecosystem using hyperspectral data obtained with an ASD FieldSpec® 3 (Analytical Spectral Devices Inc., Boulder, CO, EE. UU.) spectroradiometer. Optical data were correlated with biophysical variables (specific leaf area (SLA), above-ground...

Climate change and pathogen outbreaks are the two major causes of decline in Mediterranean holm oak trees (Quercus ilex L. subsp. ballota (Desf.) Samp.). Crown‐level changes in response to these stressful conditions have been widely documented but the responses of the root systems remain unexplored. The effects of environmental stress over roots an...

The contribution of cattle production to climate change is increasingly recognized, and there is a need to identify those systems minimizing emissions and maximizing carbon (C) sinks. In the Southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, cattle are produced on dehesa agroforestry systems, where cows and calves graze together until weaning, and calf fattening...

Sun‐induced fluorescence in the far‐red region (SIF) is increasingly used as a remote and proximal‐sensing tool capable of tracking vegetation gross primary production (GPP). However, the use of SIF to probe changes in GPP is challenged during extreme climatic events, such as heatwaves. Here, we examined how the 2018 European heatwave (HW) affected...

The input of liquid water to terrestrial ecosystems is composed of rain and non-rainfall water input (NRWI). The latter comprises dew, fog, and adsorption of atmospheric vapor on soil particle surfaces. Although NRWIs can be relevant to support ecosystem functioning in seasonally dry ecosystems, they are understudied, being relatively small, and th...

Dehesas and montados are Mediterranean agroforestry systems characterized by scattered oak trees with an understory grazed extensively by livestock and, in some cases, periodically cropped. A long history of traditional management practices has created an open woodland widely recognized for rich biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services. Concern...

Conversion of semi-natural habitats, such as field margins, fallows, hedgerows, grassland, woodlots and forests, to agricultural land could increase agricultural production and help meet rising global food demand. Yet, the extent to which such habitat loss would impact biodiversity and wild species is unknown. Here we survey species richness for fo...

The goal of the book is to fill the gap in the knowledge on silvo-pastoral systems and their changing trends, by adding the human dimension, with enough detail to draw inferences about the new governance solutions that are needed to address the multiple challenges faced by silvo-pastoral systems. This text will be highly valuable to university and...

Rural Europe encompasses a variety of landscapes with differing levels of forest, agriculture, and agroforestry that can deliver multiple ecosystem services (ES). Whilst provisioning and regulating ES associated with individual land covers are comparatively well studied, less is known about the associated cultural ES. Only seldom are provisioning,...

AimsAgroforestry systems and legume sowing have been reported as efficient in terms of soil function, gaining momentum as environmentally sustainable agricultural practices. This paper examines how the soil microbial community of Mediterranean pastures responds to legume-enrichment.Methods We used phospholipid fatty acids profiling (PLFA) to measur...

Earthworms are an important soil taxon as ecosystem engineers, providing a variety of crucial ecosystem functions and services. Little is known about their diversity and distribution at large spatial scales, despite the availability of considerable amounts of local-scale data. Earthworm diversity data, obtained from the primary literature or provid...

Nutrient availability, especially of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), is of major importance for every organism and at a larger scale for ecosystem functioning and productivity. Changes in nutrient availability and potential stoichiometric imbalance due to anthropogenic nitrogen deposition might lead to nutrient deficiency or alter ecosystem functi...

The coupling of radiative transfer, energy balance, and photosynthesis models has brought new opportunities to characterize vegetation functional properties from space. However, these models do not accurately represent processes in ecosystems characterized by mixtures of green vegetation and senescent plant material (SPM), in particular grasslands....

Analyzing tree structural features and capturing their temporal dynamic is challenging but crucial for determining key state variables related to plant function, management practices, and aboveground vegetation stocks. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) provides a mean for representing those key variables in three-dimensional space and through time....

Iberian man-made oak savannahs (so called dehesas) are traditional silvopastoral systems with a high natural value. Scattered trees provide shelter and additional food to livestock (cattle in our study sites), which also makes possible for animals depending on trees in a grass-dominated landscape to be present. We compared dehesas with nearby treel...

Dehesas, human-shaped savannah-like ecosystems, where the overstorey is mainly dominated by the evergreen holm oak (Quercus ilex L. subsp. ballota [Desf.] Samp.), are classified as a global conservation priority. Despite being Q. ilex a species adapted to the harsh Mediterranean environmental conditions, recent decades have witnessed worrisome tren...

Forest decline induced by Phytophthora is a global phenomenon that affects many tree species. In central Europe, the health of Quercus robur has been declining due to various biotic and abiotic factors, since the 2000s. In drought-prone areas in the Mediterranean region, forests of Q. ilex show maintained tree mortality since the 1980s. The efficac...

Agroforestry systems are reported as climate-resilient productive systems, but it is yet unclear how tree shade affects crops performance. The aim of this work was to assess how the phenology, plant traits and grain yield of wheat and barley were affected by shade. In an open greenhouse experiment, we cultivated in pots nine cultivars differing in...

Agricultural intensification continues to threaten habitat and biological diversity in farmland. In Europe, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has established several measures to support biodiversity-fostering elements such as landscape features, semi-natural habitats and extensive land uses, together referred to as Green and Blue Infrastructure...

The management of high-quality timber plantations prioritizes obtaining high productions with short rotation cycles, which results in high economic and environmental costs, similar to intensive agricultural systems. The suppression of the herbaceous understorey by ploughing, and the use of fertilizers to boost tree growth potentially pose high envi...

Recent forest expansion in Euro‐Mediterranean countries predominantly results from secondary succession in abandoned farmland, rather than from artificial afforestation. This major forest transition involves the delivery of both ecosystem services and disservices, which must be balanced through new land‐use planning and policy approaches. Ecosystem...

Resin extraction from wild pistachio trees is an extant agroforestry practice in Western Iran. This practice plays a great socio-economic role in rural communities, but its effects on tree survival and forest stand persistence is still unknown. The objective of this study was to assess how this practice could affect the persistence of wild pistachi...

The inter-annual variability (IAV) of the terrestrial carbon cycle is tightly linked to the variability of semi-arid ecosystems. Thus, it is of utmost importance to understand what the main meteorological drivers for the IAV of such ecosystems are, and how they respond to extreme events such as droughts and heatwaves. To shed light onto these quest...

This is the supplementary material to the manuscript 'Drought and heatwave impacts on semi-arid ecosystems' carbon fluxes along a precipitation gradient'

Traditional forms of agroforestry are often recognized as exemplar systems that successfully integrate food production, biodiversity conservation and high cultural values. However many traditional agroforestry systems in Europe are in decline or are threatened and the perspectives of local stakeholders on the production, management, socio-economic,...

p>Mixed vegetation systems such as wood pastures and shrubby pastures are vital for extensive and sustainable livestock production as well as for the conservation of biodiversity and provision of ecosystem services, and are mostly located in areas that are expected to be more strongly affected by climate change. However, the structural characterist...

Accurate estimation of canopy cover (CC) and its delineation in tree-grass ecosystems (TGE) such as savannas and silvopastoral systems are crucial to analyze and model the functioning of these systems and the role of trees at different scales. At large-scale, remote sensing is a key tool, and assessments of land use and landscape elements often rel...

There is an increasing demand to study the long-term effects of land use from both local farm and wider societal and environmental perspectives. This study applied an approach to evaluate both the financial profitability of arable, agroforestry, and tree-only systems and the wider societal benefits over a period of 30-60 years. The biophysical inpu...

This report intends to address the role that extensive farming can play in the context of climate change, both in connection with improving the assessment of its emissions and their derived effects, as well as contributing to its adaptation, and above all, harnessing all its potential to fight climate change. This report is conceived as a technical...

The potential of carbonyl sulfide (COS) flux measurements as an additional constraint for estimating the gross primary production depends, among other preconditions, on our understanding of the soil COS exchange and its contribution to the overall net ecosystem COS flux. We conducted soil chamber measurements of COS, with transparent chambers, in t...

Key message Two months of drought or waterlogging conditions did not induce carbon starvation in Castanea sativa. Carbohydrate dynamics in treated plants provide evidence of why this species adapts well to dry but not to waterlogging conditions. Abstract Drought and flooding events, which cause water and oxygen deprivation in tree roots, are expec...

Anthropogenic nitrogen (N) deposition and resulting differences in ecosystem N and phosphorus (P) ratios are expected to impact photosynthetic capacity, i.e. maximum gross primary productivity (GPPmax). However, the interplay between N and P availability with other critical resources on seasonal dynamics of ecosystem productivity remain largely unk...

Abstract. Remote Sensing (RS) has traditionally provided estimates of key biophysical properties controlling light interaction with the canopy (e.g., chlorophyll content ( C _ab) or leaf area index (LAI)). However, recent and upcoming developments in hyperspectral RS are expected to lead to a new generation of products such as vegetation...

Semi-arid grasslands and other ecosystems combine green and senescent leaves featuring different biochemical and optical properties, as well as functional traits. Knowing how these properties vary is necessary to understand the functioning of these ecosystems. However, differences between green and senescent leaves are not considered in recent mode...

Este cuaderno, coeditado por la Fundación Entretantos y la Plataforma por la Ganadería Extensiva y el Pastoralismo, recopila y organiza un intenso trabajo colectivo desarrollado en el seno de la Plataforma para abordar la adaptación y la lucha contra el cambio climático desde la perspectiva de la ganadería extensiva. El proceso se inició con una se...

Agricultural intensification continues being a major threat for biodiversity worldwide. Despite the incorporation of diverse conservation tools in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) since the 1990s, European agriculture continues intensifying. The last CAP reform introduced compulsory greening, including measures to support semi-natural habitats...