Josep Padullés Cubino

CREAF Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications | CREAF

tA substantial proportion of the cultivated plants in urban domestic gardens in Europe are exotic species.Among these species, a large number may become invasive, causing negative impacts on natural areas. Toprevent this situation, the early detection of invasive species and the assessment of propagule pressureplay a key role. In this study, we ana...

Urban sprawl along the Mediterranean coast is characterized by single-family houses and domestic gardens. Many new residences are secondary homes for sociodemographically diverse tourists. We explore the differences between the residence types in terms of their garden structures and plant compositions using socioeconomic and legacy attributes. Outd...

Relatively unmanaged interstitial areas at the residential–wildland interface can support the development of novel woody plant communities. Community assembly processes in urban areas involve interactions between spontaneous and cultivated species pools that include native, introduced (exotic/non-native) and invasive species. The potential of these...

Recent urbanization and human activities have led to the fragmentation of natural landscape patches and reduced the connectivity and degradation of urban ecosystems and biodiversity. Urban plant richness affects social functions and the well-being of urban residents and is driven by land use, local wealth, and urban green space management. Among th...

Despite interest in the contribution of evapotranspiration (ET) of residential turfgrass lawns to household and municipal water budgets across the United States, the spatial and temporal variability of residential lawn ET across large scales is highly uncertain. We measured instantaneous ET (ETinst) of lawns in 79 residential yards in six metropoli...

Conservation strategies often assume that the total number of species at a specific location can be used as a proxy for other biodiversity dimensions, such as, the presence of rare and threatened species. However, the validity of this assumption remains unclear, particularly at the plot scale. Here, we used~17,000 vegetation plots sampled across th...

Trees are frequently unevenly distributed in urban areas, and their diversity, abundance, and composition vary spatially. Some studies have shown that the unequal distribution of urban trees can be associated with demographic and socioeconomic factors. However, most studies have been conducted in diffuse urban systems using remotely-sensed tree cov...

Plant flammability is an important driver of wildfires, and flammability itself is determined by several plant functional traits. While many plant traits are influenced by climatic conditions, the interaction between climatic conditions and plant flammability has rarely been investigated. Here, we explored the relationships among climatic condition...

Questions Do forest structural parameters related to stand heterogeneity enhance functional diversity (FD) of understorey plant communities? Do FD and functional composition of understorey plant communities vary between high‐forest (HF) and old coppices‐with‐standard (oldCWS) management types? Are HF stands characterized by a higher FD than oldCWS?...

Understanding the drivers of urban plant diversity (UPD) and above ground biomass (AGB) in urbanized areas is critical for urban ecosystem services and biodiversity protection. The relationships between UPD and AGB have been investigated simultaneously. However, the drivers of UPD and AGB have been explored independently in tropical coastal areas a...

Drivers of patterns in plant diversity remain poorly understood in tropical cities. Therefore, we investigated diversity within the tropical city of Sanya in Hainan Province of southern China by sampling one to three plots within 154 urban functional units (UFUs) based on six primary and 18 secondary UFUs. To measure diversity, we determined the nu...

Understanding how species turnover responds to environmental change may provide insights into the ecological factors influencing biogeographical patterns. Here, I examined geographic patterns in taxonomic and functional turnover of tree assemblages in Europe and compared the influence of environmental factors on turnover. I conducted a principal co...

Alpine ecosystems are hotspots of biodiversity despite their cold climates. Here we investigate spatial patterns in the phylogenetic diversity (i.e. the degree of species relatedness) of European alpine floras and quantify the influence of climatic conditions since the late Pleistocene and historical climatic instability in shaping these patterns....

Questions Urbanisation has accelerated the spread of alien and apophytic species around the world including the drylands of continental inland Asia. However, few studies have examined the patterns and drivers of urban plant diversity in this region. We ask how habitat type, city size and macroclimate affect species richness and composition of alien...

Invasive alien species can have severe negative impacts on natural ecosystems. These impacts may be particularly pronounced within ecological communities, where alien species can cause local extinctions. However, it is unclear whether individual alien plant species consistently occur in species-poor or species-rich communities across broad geograph...

1. Niche filtering predicts that abundant species in communities have similar traits that are suitable for the environment. However, niche filtering can operate on distinct axes of trait variation in response to different ecological conditions. Here, we use a trait-based approach to infer niche filtering processes and (1) test if abundant and rare...

Urban green spaces (UGSs) provide a plethora of ecosystem services that benefit humans and wildlife within cities. UGS both promotes and is affected by overall urban ecological health, which can be measured by a wide range of indices. In this study, we investigated the distribution patterns and drivers of UGS within the tropical coastal city of Hai...

En este capítulo se introduce el concepto de cambio ambiental y se analiza su impacto en las montañas de la cuenca mediterránea a partir de los resultados vinculados al espacio natural protegido del Alta Garrotxa (Cataluña, España). Esta aproximación se basa en la evoluci n hist rica de sus bosques, los cambios de usos y cubiertas del suelo -desde...

Urban green spaces (UGSs) provide a plethora of ecosystem services that benefit humans and wildlife within cities. UGS both promotes and is affected by overall urban ecological health, which can be measured by a wide range of indices. In this study, we investigated the distribution patterns and drivers of UGS within the tropical coastal city of Hai...

Urban plant diversity influences the social functioning and well-being of urban dwellers. However, the patterns and drivers of plant diversity in tropical urban areas are still not entirely understood. In response to the knowledge deficiencies in this area, we investigated spontaneous and cultivated plant richness and their phylogenetic diversity a...

We asked what are the behavioural and logistic preferences of professional and amateur botanists when exploring flora in the field. We extracted temporal and spatial data on vascular plant species occurrences from three datasets of Sicilian flora: a subset of iNaturalist, a dataset collected by a Facebook group focused on the flora of Sicily and a...

Urbanization has a homogenizing effect on biodiversity and leads to communities with fewer native species and lower conservation value. However, few studies have explored whether or how which land management by urban residents can ameliorate the deleterious effects of this homogenization on species composition. We tested the effects of local (land...

Aim Many plant species native to Europe have naturalized worldwide. We tested whether the phylogenetic structure of the species pools of European habitats is related to the proportion of species from each habitat that has naturalized outside Europe (habitat’s donor role) and whether the donated species are more phylogenetically related to each othe...

Whether cities are more or less diverse than surrounding environments, and the extent to which non-native species in cities impact regional species pools, remain two fundamental yet unanswered questions in urban ecology. Here we offer a unifying framework for understanding the mechanisms that generate biodiversity patterns across taxonomic groups a...

Forest understories play a vital role in ecosystem functioning and the provision of ecosystem services. However, the extent to which environmental conditions drive dominant ecological strategies in forest understories at the continental scale remains understudied. Here, we used ~29 500 forest vegetation plots sampled across Europe and classified in...

Cultivated exotic plants are often introduced for their aesthetic value and today comprise a substantial fraction of the flora of urban domestic gardens. Yet, their relative contribution to the functional diversity of domestic gardens and how it changes across different climate zones is insufficiently understood. Here, we investigated whether the e...

Aims Biodiversity is traditionally studied mostly at the species level, but biogeographical and macroecological studies at higher taxonomic levels can provide valuable insights into the evolutionary processes at large spatial scales. Our aim was to assess the representation of vascular plant families within different vegetation formations across Eu...

The assessment of the ecosystem state is fundamental to understand the success of ecological rehabilitation, especially in the long-term. We aim to evaluate the rehabilitation success of a unique Mediterranean dune system site along the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy which underwent a dune consolidation intervention and species planting at the beginning...

Social networks offer communication channels through which people share huge amounts of primary data that can be used for scientific analyses, including biodiversity research. To understand to what extent data extracted from social networks could complement data collected for scientific purposes, it is necessary to quantify the bias of such data. W...

Aims (a) To determine the contribution of current macro‐environmental factors in explaining the phylogenetic structure of European forest vegetation, (b) to map and describe spatial patterns in their phylogenetic structure and (c) to examine which lineages are the most important contributors to phylogenetic clustering and whether their contribution...

Aims The effect of biogeographical processes on the spatial turnover component of beta‐diversity over large spatial extents remains scarcely understood. Here, we aim at disentangling the roles of environmental and historical factors on plant taxonomic and phylogenetic turnover, while controlling for the effects of species richness and rarity. Loca...

Urban biotic homogenization is expected to be especially important in residential yards, where similar human preferences and management practices across environmentally heterogeneous regions might lead to the selection of similar plant species, closely related species, and/or species with similar sets of traits. We investigated how different yard m...

Terrestrial plants and fire have interacted for at least 420 million years1. Whether recurrent fire drives plants to evolve higher flammability and what the evolutionary pattern of plant flammability is remain unclear2–7. Here, we show that phylogeny, the susceptibility of a habitat to have recurrent fires (that is, fire-proneness) and growth form...

To improve the environmental performance of small and medium-sized accommodation enterprises, it is important to understand the factors and motivations that move managers to adopt more efficient technologies and ecologically responsible practices. A sample of 18 independent family-run hotels and campsites were contacted in the mature tourist resort...

Understanding the factors that influence biodiversity in urban areas is important for informing management efforts aimed at enhancing the ecosystem services in urban settings and curbing the spread of invasive introduced species. We determined the ecological and socioeconomic factors that influence patterns of plant richness, phylogenetic diversity...

Residential yards contribute to human well-being and urban biodiversity. The structure, diversity, and composition of yard floras are largely determined by personal choices and landscaping priorities at local scales, but it is unclear whether these relationships hold across broader geographical areas. We investigated the relationship between homeow...

Cultivation and spread of non-native plant species may result in either phylogenetic homoge-nization (increasing similarity) or differentiation (decreasing similarity) of urban floras. However, it is unknown how non-native species influence homogenization of cultivated versus spontaneously occurring species in cities, and which traits are associate...

Context: As urban areas increase in extent globally, domestic yards play an increasingly important role as potential contributors to ecosystem services and wellbeing. These benefits largely depend on the plant species richness and composition of yards. Objectives: We aim to determine the factors that drive plant species richness and phylogenetic c...

If western science is to become relevant to indigenous cultures, one path forward is through the language of that culture. The importance of te reo Māori was summarised by one of the great Māori Battalion veterans and prominent Ngāpuhi (an iwi, or tribe) leaders Sir James Hēnare, “The language is the core of our culture and mana [validity]. Ko te r...

Exotic plant invasions can alter fire regimes in plant communities. Invaders often possess traits that differ from native plants in the community, resulting in increases or declines in community‐level flammability, changing fire regimes and potentially causing long‐term modifications to plant community composition. Although considering traits of mu...

The recent growth of low-density urban developments in the Mediterranean region has led to an increase in the number of private domestic gardens. These gardens host high levels of plant biodiversity and may act as a source of dispersion of potential invaders. This study analyzed the flora of 258 domestic gardens in the urban seafront of the Alt Emp...

El projecte Geoactiva't neix al Departament de Geografia de la Universitat de Girona com a eina per acostar els estudiants del grau de Geografia, Ordenació del Territori i Gestió del Medi Ambient a la tasca docent de secundària i, alhora, presentar, als alumnes d'ESO, conceptes, eines i mètodes de la geografia des d'una perspectiva experimental i d...

Garantizar la disponibilidad de agua es clave para el éxito de hoteles y campings, y por ello es importante que los establecimientos adopten medidas para la buena gestión y ahorro de este recurso. En España, conocer los estímulos y motivaciones de los gestores de pequeños establecimientos de carácter familiar es clave para introducir mejoras en su...

Gardeners can consume a large proportion of total domestic water, depending on their garden type and gardening style. We calculated water requirements of gardens based on species composition and land cover, and determined whether they can be predicted from the socio-economic, demographic and cultural characteristics of households. We recorded the p...

RESUMEN La ecología urbana analiza los procesos y las interacciones de los ecosistemas urbanos con su entorno biofísico y humano más inmediato. Estos ecosistemas albergan altos niveles de biodiversidad a la vez que proporcionan bienes y servicios a la sociedad. El propósito de este estudio es elaborar un marco teórico a partir de la revisión biblio...

Urban ecology examines processes and interactions between urban ecosystems and their biophysical and immediate human environment. These ecosystems host vegetated areas with high levels of biodiversity and also provide several goods and services to society. The purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical framework based on a review of relevant...

L’estudi de l’Anàlisi del Cicle de Vida (ACV) ha estat realitzat a l’empresa CRODA Ibèrica S.A - Mevisa Site, en concret a la línia productiva on s’hi fabrica el monoestearat de glicerina utilitzant una eina informàtica comercial denominada SIMAPRO que analitza i compara els aspectes mediambientals d’un producte d’una manera sistemàtica i consisten...

Water scarcity in developed countries along the Mediterranean coast may be aggravated in the near future due to rising water demand. The recent growth of low-density urban developments in these regions has led to an increase in the number of private domestic gardens. These particular landscapes may account for a large proportion of total domestic w...

Gardens represent important sources of goods and services for their owners. This functionality translates directly into the types of plants cultivated in a given garden, and terminology has been developed to distinguish each category of garden according to its purpose. The factors explaining the differentiation and distribution of gardens have not...