Jorge Durán

University of Coimbra | UC · Centre for Functional Ecology - Science for People & the Planet

While the contribution of biodiversity to supporting multiple ecosystem functions is well established in natural ecosystems, the relationship of the above- and below-ground diversity with ecosystem multifunctionality remains virtually unknown in urban greenspaces. Here we conducted a standardized survey of urban greenspaces from 56 municipalities a...

Mediterranean forests are among the most vulnerable ecosystems to climate change. Despite this, very little is known about the effects of climate change on soil functioning and how they vary across soil depths. Here, we experimentally assessed the short-term effects of a 30% rainfall reduction on phosphorus, ammonium, and nitrate availability in tw...

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...

Soils are the foundation of all terrestrial ecosystems1. However, unlike for plants and animals, a global assessment of hotspots for soil nature conservation is still lacking2. This hampers our ability to establish nature conservation priorities for the multiple dimensions that support the soil system: from soil biodiversity to ecosystem services....

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...

The structure and function of the soil microbiome of urban greenspaces remain largely undetermined. We conducted a global field survey in urban greenspaces and neighboring natural ecosystems across 56 cities from six continents, and found that urban soils are important hotspots for soil bacterial, protist and functional gene diversity , but support...

Climate change-driven increases in aridity will lead to dryland expansion worldwide. In the Atlantic and Med-iterranean biogeographic regions, coastal dunes are priority conservation areas highly sensitive to aridification where plants and biological soil crusts may play a key role maintaining ecosystem services. However, we still need further insi...

Polar glacier forefields offer an unprecedented framework for studying community assembly processes in regions that are geographically and climatically isolated. Through amplicon sequence variant (ASV) inference, we compared the composition and structure of soil bacterial communities from glacier forefields in Iceland and Antarctica to assess overl...

Little is known about the role of biocrusts in regulating the responses of N2O and CH4 fluxes to climate change in drylands. Here, we aim to help filling this knowledge gap by using an 8-year field experiment in central Spain where temperature and rainfall are being manipulated (~ 1.9°C warming, 33% rainfall reduction and their combination) in area...

Variations in snow depth have complex effects on soil microclimate. Snow insulates soil and thus regulates, along with air temperature, the nature, and extent of soil freezing. There is great uncertainty about the main drivers of soil freezing, which have important effects on ecosystem carbon and nitrogen cycling processes and might change as clima...

The importance of soil phosphorus (P) is likely to increase in coming decades due to the growing atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition originated by industrial and agricultural activities. We currently lack a proper understanding of the main drivers of soil P pools in coastal dunes, which rank among the most valued priority conservation areas worldwi...

Soil nitrogen (N) availability is a key driver of soil-atmosphere greenhouse gas (GHG) exchange, yet we are far from understanding how increases in N deposition due to human activities will influence the net soil-atmosphere fluxes of the three most important GHGs: nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2). We simulated four levels...

The Walker and Syers model predict that phosphorus (P) availability decreases with time leading to a final stage known as retrogression. We tested the validity of the Walker and Syers model in the Canary Islands, a soil chronosequence ranging from 300 years to 11 million years under recurrent episodes of atmospheric dust-containing P inputs. In par...

Drought-induced forest die-off is occurring worldwide and is projected to increase in coming decades. However, if and to what extent this phenomenon affects the content of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) in soils as well as its stability is far from clear. In a Mediterranean oak forest, we found that forest die-off negatively affected soil C and N cont...

The Mediterranean region has been suffering and will continue to suffer remarkable episodes of drought-induced forest die-off. We carried out a study in a Mediterranean Quercus ilex (holm oak) woodland to assess the effect of forest die-off on the capacity of soils to store C and N, and on the quality (i.e. labile vs. stable fractions) of soil C al...

Microorganisms carrying pmoA and nosZ genes are major drivers of methane and nitrous oxide fluxes from soils. However, most studies on these organisms have been conducted in mesic ecosystems; therefore, little is known about the factors driving their distribution in drylands, the largest biome on Earth. We conducted a global survey to evaluate the...

Rising winter air temperature will reduce snow depth and duration over the next century in northern hardwood forests. Reductions in snow depth may affect soil bacteria and fungi directly, but also affect soil microbes indirectly through effects of snowpack loss on plant roots. We incubated root exclusion and root ingrowth cores across a winter clim...

We assessed wildlife roadkill spatial patterns focusing on asphalt roads in southern Spanish oak rangelands (“dehesas”). Four roads in the Sierra Morena range (Andalusia) were surveyed twice during autumn-winter 2009–2010 and spring-summer 2010. Roadsides were walked on both sides across the total road length (53 km; overall length walked per seaso...

The spatial variability (i.e. heterogeneity) of environmental variables determines a wide range of ecosystem features and plays a key role in regulating key ecosystem services. Wildfires are among the most significant natural disturbances that forests face, but our knowledge about their effect on ecosystem spatial variability is still limited. We u...

While much research over the past 30 years has focused on the deleterious effects of excess N on forests and associated aquatic ecosystems, recent declines in atmospheric N deposition and unexplained declines in N export from these ecosystems have raised new concerns about N oligotrophication, limitations of forest productivity, and the capacity fo...

Mediterranean forests will experience more frequent and intense drought periods and extreme rainfall events in the coming decades. Concomitantly, drought-induced forest die-off is likely to increase. Changes in rainfall patterns and forest die-off directly influence soil microbial communities and activity and, consequently, carbon (C) and nitrogen...

Road permeability to animal movements depends among several factors on structures which, integrated in the road design, operate as safe conducts to mitigate vehicle collision and barrier effects. There is abundant evidence that wildlife makes use of such structures as safe passages to cross roads. We analyzed the spatial relationship between road d...

Ivermectin is the most common endectocide used to control parasites affecting livestock. Short-term physiological and behavioural effects of ivermectin on dung beetles may have long-term consequences for beetle populations and ecosystemfunctioning. Long-term effects of the use of ivermectin can be estimated by comparing dung assemblages and ecosyst...

The relationship between the spatial variability of soil multifunctionality (i.e. the capacity of soils to conduct multiple functions; SVM) and major climatic drivers, such as temperature and aridity, has never been assessed globally in terrestrial ecosystems. We surveyed 236 dryland ecosystems from six continents to evaluate the relative importanc...

Background and aims The occurrence of drought-induced forest die-off events is projected to increase in the future, but we still lack complete understanding of its impact on plant-soil interactions, soil microbial diversity and function. We investigated the effects of holm oak (Quercus ilex) decline (HOD) on soil microbial community and functioning...

Climate of the northern hardwood forests of North America will become significantly warmer in the coming decades. Associated increases in soil temperature, decreases in water availability and changes in winter snow pack and soil frost are likely to affect soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling. Most studies of the effects of climate change on soi...

Scientific evidence overwhelmingly projects climate change-driven increases in aridity in many areas of the planet in coming decades. However, it is still a major scientific challenge to understand the likely effects of climate change on multiple ecosystem functions and services. We aimed to understand, under natural conditions, how changes in arid...

Ecosystem functioning in the Mediterranean region is largely governed by water availability. Mediterranean holm oak (Quercus ilex) forests have been lately suffering drought-induced tree defoliation and mortality, and this situation is likely to worsen in the coming decades. Large efforts have been made to understand the effects of forest die-off o...

Reduced snowpack and associated increases in soil freezing severity resulting from winter climate change have the potential to disrupt carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling in soils. We used a natural winter climate gradient based on elevation and aspect in a northern hardwood forest to examine the effects of variability in soil freezing depth, durat...

Snow cover is projected to decline during the next century in many ecosystems that currently experience a seasonal snowpack. Because snow insulates soils from frigid winter air temperatures, soils are expected to become colder and experience more winter soil freeze-thaw cycles as snow cover continues to decline. Tree roots are adversely affected by...

Nitrogen (N) supply often limits the productivity of temperate forests and is regulated by a complex mix of biological and climatic drivers. In excess, N is linked to a variety of soil, water, and air pollution issues. Here, we use results from an elevation gradient study and historical data from the longterm Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study (New Hamp...

In the last decades, Iberian holm oak forests have shown drought-induced defoliation and mortality rates never registered before. Things could get even worse, as drought events are expected to become more frequent and intense in the coming decades. Holm oak forests are key ecosystems in the Iberian Peninsula because of its extension and socioeconom...

Climate change and atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition are two of the most important global change drivers. However, the interactions of these drivers have not been well studied. We aimed to assess how the combined effect of soil N additions and more frequent soil drying-rewetting events affects carbon (C) and N cycling, soil-atmosphere greenhouse...

Nitrogen (N) is the nutrient that most frequently limits the productivity of forest ecosystems. Understanding N cycling and forest response to altered N inputs and climate change is an ongoing research challenge. In several intensively studied forests in northeastern North America, well-characterized N inputs are not balanced by measured N losses,...

In northern forests, large amounts of missing N that dominate N balances at scales ranging from small watersheds to large regional drainage basins may be related to N-gas production by soil microbes. We measured denitrification rates in forest soils in northeastern North America along a N deposition gradient to determine whether N-gas fluxes were a...

Understanding the responses of terrestrial ecosystems to global change remains a major challenge of ecological research. We exploited a natural elevation gradient in a northern hardwood forest to determine how reductions in snow accumulation, expected with climate change, directly affect dynamics of soil winter frost, and indirectly soil microbial...

Incoming solar radiation is the main determinant of terrestrial ecosystem processes, such as primary production, litter decomposition, or soil mineralization rates. Light in terrestrial ecosystems is spatially and temporally heterogeneous due to the interaction among sunlight angle, cloud cover and tree-canopy structure. To integrate this variabili...

A pesar del creciente reconocimiento del papel de las ciudades en los ciclos biogeoquímicos globales, los sistemas urbanos constituyen uno de los ecosistemas menos conocidos. Los prados urbanos se están expandiendo rápidamente junto con la urbanización, la cual avanzará a tasas sin precedentes en las próximas décadas, justificando la necesidad de e...

Despite growing recognition of the role that cities have in global biogeochemical cycles, urban systems are among the least understood of all ecosystems. Urban grasslands are expanding rapidly along with urbanization, which is expected to increase at unprecedented rates in upcoming decades. The large and increasing area of urban grasslands and thei...

Two types of measures have traditionally been used to monitor changes after disturbances in the nutrient availability of forest ecosystems: (1) soil nutrient pools and transformation rates and (2) foliar nutrient content. We used a wildfire chronosequence in natural and unmanaged Pinus canariensis forests to determine which kind of measure is more...

Nitrogen mineralization is a critical ecosystem process that is difficult to measure. Among several in situ methods used to estimate N mineralization rates in soils, the buried bag and covered-cylinder methods are two of the most common. Few studies have compared N mineralization rates from these two in situ methods, and it is still unclear if they...

The presence of a legume in a nitrogen (N)-limited forest ecosystem may not only create “islands of N fertility” but also affect the phosphorus (P) availability. The main objective of this study was to compare the effect of a pine (Pinus canariensis) and a leguminous (Adenocarpus viscosus) species on the spatial pattern and variability of different...

• Growing concerns about fires and the increase of fire frequency and severity due to climate change have stimulated a large number of scientific papers about fire ecology. Most researchers have focused on the short-term effects of fire, and the knowledge about the long-term consequences of fires on ecosystem nutrient dynamics is still scarce. • Ou...

The effect of wildfire on ecosystem function is gaining interest since climate change is expected to increase fire frequency and intensity in many forest systems. Fire alters the nutritional status of forest ecosystems, affecting ecosystem function and productivity, but further studies evaluating changes in leaf nutrient traits induced by forest wi...

El principal objetivo de este trabajo fue describir el efecto del fuego sobre el patrón espacial de diferentes formas de N y P del suelo a una escala relevante para las plantas. El estudio se llevó a cabo en un bosque de Pinus canariensis de la isla de La Palma (Islas Canarias, España). Muestreamos parcelas cuadradas establecidas alrededor de indiv...

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The concern that climate change may increase fire frequency and intensity has recently heightened the interest in the effects of wildfires on ecosystem functioning. Although short-term fire effects on forest soils are well known, less information can be found on the long-term effects of wildfires on soil fertility. Our objective was to study the 17...

Nitrogen-fixing plants alter the chemical properties of the soil beneath plant canopies, particularly by concentrating nitrogen-rich organic matter. We hypothesize that the presence of a legume canopy inside a plot will more greatly influence the spatial structure of soil nitrogen (N) than phosphorus (P). We also investigated whether the effects of...

• Soil resources are heterogeneously distributed in terrestrial plant communities. This heterogeneity is important because it determines the availability of local soil resources. A forest fire may change the spatial distribution of soil nutrients, affecting nutrition and survival of colonizing plants. However, specific information on the effects of...

The spatial heterogeneity of essential plant resources plays a crucial role in the structure, composition and productivity of many terrestrial ecosystems. Fires may affect both the availability and spatial pattern of soil nutrients. However, little is known about the effect of fire on the spatial pattern of soil resources. We hypothesized that shor...

Knowledge of the spatial pattern and scale of plant resources is important to aid in understanding the causes of this spatial pattern and their consequences on process at the population, community, and ecosystem levels. We tested whether the effect of individual plants on the soil properties beneath their canopies might be mediated by soil texture,...

Fire induces changes in ecosystem nutrient regimes and can cause major losses of N and P. Much has been written about the effect of fire on nutrient availability in soil;most studies have been concerned with the short-term effects of shock. The primary objective of our study was to discover the effect of forest fires on long-term N and P availabili...

Nutrient resorption is an important mechanism for nutrient preservation in plants. Variations in nutrient availability can interfere with resorption-regulating mechanisms. Disturbances (such as forest harvest) leading to a loss of organic matter and nutrients in the soil could therefore determine important changes in resorption rates. This paper ex...

Los incendios inducen cambios en el ciclo de nutrientes del ecosistema y pueden provocar grandes pérdidas de N y el P. Existen muchos trabajos acerca de los efectos del fuego sobre la disponibilidad de nutrientes en el suelo, la mayoría dirigidos a ver los efectos a corto plazo de esta perturbación. El objetivo principal de nuestro estudio fue cono...

Nitrogen availability frequently limits plant growth in natural ecosystems. N-fixers should have a substantial competitive advantage in N-limited systems, and as a byproduct of their activity they should increase the quantity and availability of N in the system as a whole. However, this effect has rarely been quantified in natural ecosystems. Heath...

La isla de la Palma posee uno de los pinares de P. canariensis mejor conservados del archipiélago canario. Se trata de pinares pobres en nutrientes, particularmente nitrógeno. Esta pobreza se explica, además de por la ausencia de nitrógeno en las rocas volcánicas, por una tasa de polución atmosférica mínima. Estos bosques son ocasionalmente perturb...

Los microorganismos del suelo juegan un papel protagonista en el funcionamiento de los ecosistemas forestales. Son responsables del ciclado de energía y nutrientes, entre ellos el nitrógeno, principal limitante de la producción primaria neta de estos ecosistemas. Adiferencia de la inmensa mayoría de los bosques europeos, los bosques de Pinus canari...