Irene Cordero

Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL | WSL · Community Ecology Research Unit

Root functional traits are known to influence soil properties that underpin ecosystem functioning. Yet few studies have explored how root traits simultaneously influence physical, chemical, and biological properties of soil, or how these responses are modified by common grassland perturbations that shape roots, such as defoliation and fertilisation...

Soil microbial communities play a pivotal role in regulating ecosystem functioning. But they are increasingly being shaped by human-induced environmental change, including intense “pulse” perturbations, such as droughts, which are predicted to increase in frequency and intensity with climate change. While it is known that soil microbial communities...

• Reduced oxygen increased microbial metabolic quotient (qCO2).• Reduced oxygen enhanced microbial specific C-, N- and P-acquiring enzyme activity.• Reduced oxygen increased microbial C relative to N and P limitation. • Reduced oxygen increased microbial N relative to P limitation. • Specific enzyme activity was positively related to qCO2 under red...

Soil microbial communities play a pivotal role in regulating ecosystem functioning but they are increasingly threatened by human-driven perturbations, including climate extremes, which are predicted to increase in frequency and intensity with climate change. It has been demonstrated that soil microbial communities are sensitive to climate extremes,...

Climate change is disproportionately impacting mountain ecosystems, leading to large reductions in winter snow cover, earlier spring snowmelt and widespread shrub expansion into alpine grasslands. Yet, the combined effects of shrub expansion and changing snow conditions on abiotic and biotic soil properties remains poorly understood. We used comple...

It is widely accepted that the measurement of organic and inorganic forms of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) in soils should be performed on fresh extracts taken from fresh soil samples. However, this is often not possible, and it is common practice to store samples (soils and/or extracts), despite a lack of guidance on best practice. We utilised a cas...

Photoprotection is a plant functional mechanisms to prevent photooxidative damage by excess light. This is most important when carbon assimilation is limited by drought, and as such, it entails a trade-off between carbon assimilation vs stress avoidance. The ecological adaptation of plants to local water availability can lead to different photoprot...

Mangrove ecosystems are important for carbon storage due to their high productivity and low decomposition rates. Waterways have experienced increased nutrient loads as a result of anthropogenic activities and it is unclear how this may affect carbon and nutrient cycles in downstream mangroves that receive these nutrient-rich waters. Using a laborat...

Soil microbial communities regulate global biogeochemical cycles and respond rapidly to changing environmental conditions. However, understanding how soil microbial communities respond to climate change, and how this influences biogeochemical cycles, remains a major challenge. This is especially pertinent in alpine regions where climate change is t...

It is widely accepted that the measurement of organic and inorganic forms of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) in soils should be performed on fresh extracts taken from fresh soil samples. However, this is often not possible, and it is common practice to store samples (soils and/or extracts), despite a lack of guidance on best practice. Here, we demonstr...

Maternal effects (i.e. trans‐generational plasticity) and soil legacies generated by drought and plant diversity can affect plant performance and alter nutrient cycling and plant community dynamics. However, the relative importance and combined effects of these factors on plant growth dynamics remain poorly understood. We used soil and seeds from a...

Extracellular enzymes break down soil organic matter into smaller compounds and their measurement has proved to be a powerful tool to evaluate the functionality of soils. Urease is the enzyme that degrades urea and is widely considered to be a good proxy of nitrogen (N) mineralisation. But the methods available to measure this enzyme are time consu...

Salt stress has become a major menace to plant growth and productivity. The main goal of this study was to investigate the effect of inoculation with the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF; Rhizophagus intraradices) in combination or not with plant growth‐promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR; Pseudomonas sp. (Ps) and Bacillus subtilis) on the establishment...

Plant growth‐promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are soil bacteria that colonize the rhizosphere of plants, enhance plant growth, and may alleviate environmental stress, thus constituting a powerful tool in sustainable agriculture. Here, we compared the capacity of chemical fertilization to selected PGPR strains to promote growth and alleviate salinity...

Caesalpinia spinosa, tara, is the predominant fog catcher tree in the fog forest of Atiquipa, a biodiversity hotspot ecosystem within the coastal Peruvian desert highly threatened by intense land use over time. We investigated the impact of deforestation, as well as potential effects of the tree age (juveniles vs adults) and the type of tree (recru...

Tropical dry forests are highly endangered ecosystems that have been scarcely studied. Many species within these forests suffer regeneration problems due to unsustainable management regimes. In particular , a regeneration problem has been detected in a forest of tara (Caesalpinia spinosa), a neotropical tree of high ecological and economic value, i...

Integrar las comunidades del suelo en la teoría ecológica general es uno de los desafíos actuales de la Ecología Terrestre. Las comunidades de organismos del suelo son responsables de la descomposición y el reciclado de nutrientes, procesos esenciales para el funcionamiento de los ecosistemas terrestres y los ciclos biogeoquímicos a escala global....

Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) are beneficial soil microorganisms that colonize plant roots. We evaluated the PGPR capacity of seven bacterial strains by testing different abilities, including their effect on the growth of tomato plants subjected or not to saline stress. Rhizobacteria were isolated from roots of Caesalpinia spinosa (Mo...

Appendix S1. Additional details of Material and Methods. Figure S1. Annual microclimatic patterns in the forest and at the adjacent reforested area. Table S1. Primer sequences used in the analyses of plastid DNA. (DOC)

Background: In the Peruvian Coastal Desert, an archipelago of fog oases, locally called lomas, are centers of biodiversity and of past human activity. Fog interception by a tree canopy, dominated by the legume tree tara (Caesalpinia spinosa), enables the occurrence in the Atiquipa lomas (southern Peru) of an environmental island with a diverse flo...

Resumen Los estreses abióticos afectan negativamente al rendimiento de las leguminosas principalmente en suelos pobres en nitrógeno. Esto se debe a que la simbiosis Rhizobium-leguminosa y la fijación simbiótica de nitrógeno son altamente sensibles a dichos estreses. Es posible utilizar diferentes estrategias para dotar a las leguminosas de una mayo...