Josep Penuelas

Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)-Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF) · Global Ecology Unit

Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing rapidly and continually evolving in various fields. Recently, the release of ChatGPT has sparked significant public interest. In this study, we revisit the ‘100 Important Questions Facing Plant Science’ by leveraging ChatGPT as a valuable tool for generating thought-provoking ques- tions relevant to plant s...

Enhancement of soil organic carbon (SOC) and nitrogen (N) storage in degraded ecosystems is of great significance for improving soil quality and mitigating climate change. Grazing exclusion is an effective management practice to restore degraded ecosystems in drylands. However, the spatio-temporal dynamics and regulating factors of SOC and N seques...

Whether and how to synchronously regulate stream water nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations and ratios is a major challenge for sustainable aquatic functions. Soil carbon (C):N:P ratios influence soil N and P stocks and biogeochemical processes that elicit subsequent substantial impacts on stream water N and P concentrations and ratios. T...

The persistence of soil organic carbon (SOC) is primarily driven by microbial metabolic activities; however, how microbial effects on SOC sequestration are affected by soil nutrient status remains unclear. Here, we conducted a one-year-long in situ soil incubation experiment using mesh bags (with a mesh size of 38 µm, allowing bacterial colonizatio...

The soil priming effect (PE), defined as the modification of soil organic matter decomposition by labile carbon (C) inputs, is known to influence C storage in terrestrial ecosystems. However, how chronic nutrient addition, particularly in leguminous and non-leguminous forests, will affect PE through interaction with nutrient (e.g., nitrogen) availa...

Crossing certain aridity thresholds in global drylands can lead to abrupt decays of ecosystem attributes such as plant productivity, potentially causing land degradation and desertification. It is largely unknown, however, whether these thresholds can be altered by other key global change drivers known to affect the water-use efficiency and product...

Flash droughts pose large threats to crop yields and ecosystem services due to their sudden onset and rapid intensification, arousing wide public concern in a warming climate. Their long-term characteristics of change, underlying mechanisms, and especially potential impacts on agriculture, forests, and populations at a global scale, however, remain...

Recent advances in the satellite retrieval of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) provide new opportunities for understanding the phenological responses of ecosystems to global climate change. Because of the strong link between SIF and plant gross photosynthesis, phenological events derived from SIF represent the seasonal variation of ecos...

Coastal wetlands play a critical role in global carbon (C) cycling while they are frequently challenged by exotic plant invasion. Microbial residues are increasingly recognized as the key constituent of stable soil organic C (SOC) but their responses to plant invasion in coastal wetlands remain largely unknown. Here, we investigated the effect of S...

The metabolome is the biochemical basis of plant form and function, but we know little about its macroecological variation across the plant kingdom. Here, we used the plant functional trait concept to interpret leaf metabolome variation among 457 tropical and 339 temperate plant species. Distilling metabolite chemistry into five metabolic functiona...

Global warming is advancing the timing of spring leaf‐out in temperate and boreal plants, affecting biological interactions and global biogeochemical cycles. However, spatial variation in spring phenological responsiveness to climate change within species remains poorly understood. Here, we investigated variation in the responsiveness of spring phe...

Rice‐animal co‐culture (RAC) systems are an integrated farming approach to mitigate the diverse challenges facing the food system. Studies of the production potential and ecological mechanisms of RAC systems have demonstrated natural advantages over traditional production systems. The quantification of the advantages and the potential promotion of...

Biochar is increasingly used in crop production as a fertilizer; however, its effects on nutrient cycling and stoichiometry in rice paddy soil–plant systems are unclear. We tested for effects of contrasting rates of biochar on soil and rice plant organ carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) concentrations and stoichiometry and soil physicoche...

Below and aboveground vegetation dynamics are crucial in understanding how climate warming may affect terrestrial ecosystem carbon cycling. In contrast to aboveground biomass, the response of belowground biomass to long‐term warming has been poorly studied. Here, we characterized the impacts of decadal geothermal warming at two levels (on average +...

The evergreen broad-leaf forest is subtropical zonal vegetation in China, and its species diversity and stability are crucial for maintaining forest ecosystem functions. The region is generally affected by global changes such as high levels of nitrogen deposition. Therefore, it is critical to determine the adaptation strategies of subtropical domin...

Oceans serve as global reservoirs of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). However, little is known about the traits and expression of ARGs in response to environmental factors. We analyzed 347 metagenomes and 182 metatranscriptomes to determine the distribution, hosts, and expression of ARGs in oceans. Our study fou...

Adding industrial and agricultural wastes to farmland can increase soil available phosphorus (P) pool and boost crop production, but the process affecting soil P transformation and bioavailability is still poorly understood. We studied the effects of straw (ST), biochar (BC) and Si-modified biochar (Si-BC) amendments on the available-P content and...

We conducted year-long measurements of the photochemical reflectance index (PRI) and solar-induced fluorescence in the O2A oxygen band (SIFA) at a Norway spruce forest and a European beech forest to study relationships of these remote sensing variables to photosynthesis by trees in grown forest stands. Measured PRI and SIFA values were linked to ch...

When reforesting degraded lands, understory ferns can take root and cover the forest floor, which can change the quality and quantity of litter added to soils. However, it is unclear how ferns and the ongoing succession of trees impact soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics. Here, we established experimental sites in Masson pine (Pinus massoniana) stan...

China’s goal to achieve carbon (C) neutrality by 2060 requires scaling up photovoltaic (PV) and wind power from 1 to 10–15 PWh year⁻¹ (refs. 1–5). Following the historical rates of renewable installation¹, a recent high-resolution energy-system model⁶ and forecasts based on China’s 14th Five-year Energy Development (CFED)⁷, however, only indicate t...

The frequency and intensity of wildfires in recent decades have reached unprecedented levels ¹⁻³ , raising questions about the role of vegetation phenology in driving these changes. By examining both terrestrial fire perimeters and satellite observations, we found that an earlier peak photosynthesis timing (PPT) contributes to the acceleration of w...

N-enriched biochar can increase the accumulation of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and biomass in rice plants. On the other hand, the biomass and C, N, and P contents of plant organs are important indicators to reflect plant C, N, and P storages. We established control, 4 t ha−1, and 8 t ha−1 N-enriched biochar treatment plots in a subtr...

Fundamental axes of variation in plant traits result from trade-offs between costs and benefits of resource-use strategies at the leaf scale. However, it is unclear whether similar trade-offs propagate to the ecosystem level. Here, we test whether trait correlation patterns predicted by three well-known leaf- and plant-level coordination theories –...

Ecological theory posits that temporal stability patterns in plant populations are associated with differences in species' ecological strategies. However, empirical evidence is lacking about which traits, or trade-offs, underlie species stability, especially across different biomes. We compiled a worldwide collection of long-term permanent vegetati...

Despite the importance of species interactions in modulating plant range shifts, little is known on the responses of coexisting life forms to a warmer climate. Here, we combine a long-term monitoring of cambial phenology in sympatric trees and shrubs at two treelines of the Tibetan Plateau, with a meta-analysis of ring-width series from 344 shrubs...

1. Species-rich forests can produce litter of varying carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) composition (i.e., quality), which can affect decomposition and play a central role in long-term soil organic carbon (SOC) accumulation. However, how differences in litter quality affect SOC decomposition and formation remains unclear over the full litter decompositio...

Biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) play critical roles in ecosystems at various scales, influencing above-and below-ground interactions and contributing to the atmospheric environment. Nonetheless, there is a lack of research on soil BVOC fluxes and their response to environmental changes. This study aimed to investigate the impact of drou...

Plastic film mulching and urea nitrogen fertilization are widely used in agricultural ecosystems, but both their long-term use may leave a negative legacy on crop growth, due to deleterious effects of plastic and microplastic accumulation and acidification in soil, respectively. Here, we stopped covering soil with a plastic film in an experimental...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the largest pool of carbon in terrestrial ecosystems and plays a crucial role in regulating atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Identifying the essential relationship between soil bacterial communities and SOC concentration is complicated because of many factors, one of which is geography. We systematically reanalyzed 6 102...

Biogeochemical niche hypothesis (BN) aims to relate species/genotype elemental composition with its niche based on the fact that different elements are involved differentially in distinct plant functions. We here test the BN hypothesis through the analysis of the 10 foliar elemental concentrations and 20 functional-morphological of 60 tree species...

The existence of a large-biomass carbon (C) sink in Northern Hemisphere extra-tropical ecosystems (NHee) is well-established, but the relative contribution of different potential drivers remains highly uncertain. Here we isolated the historical role of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) fertilization by integrating estimates from 24 CO2 -enrichment experiments,...

Microbial communities in soils are generally considered to be limited by carbon (C), which could be a crucial control for basic soil functions and responses of microbial heterotrophic metabolism to climate change. However, global soil microbial C limitation (MCL) has rarely been estimated and is poorly understood. Here, we predicted MCL, defined as...

We examined how afforestation patterns impact carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) stoichiometry in the plant-litter-soil system. Plant leaf, branch, stem, and root, litter, and soil samples were collected from mixed-species plantations of Robinia pseudoacacia with Amygdalus davidiana (RPAD), R. pseudoacacia with Armeniaca sibirica (RPAS),...

Photosynthesis and evapotranspiration in Amazonian forests are major contributors to the global carbon and water cycles. However, their diurnal patterns and responses to atmospheric warming and drying at regional scale remain unclear, hindering the understanding of global carbon and water cycles. Here, we used proxies of photosynthesis and evapotra...

Climate change strongly impact vegetation phenology, with considerable potential to alter land-atmosphere carbon dioxide exchange and terrestrial carbon cycle. In contrast to well-studied spring leaf-out, the timing and magnitude of autumn senescence remains poorly understood. Here, we use monthly decreases in Normalized Difference Vegetation Index...

Australia’s distinctive biogeography means that it is sometimes considered an ecologically unique continent with biological and abiotic features that are not comparable to those observed in the rest of the world. This leaves some researchers unclear as to whether findings from Australia apply to systems elsewhere (or vice-versa ), which has consequ...

Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are essential elements limiting plant–microbial growth in forest ecosystems. However, whether the pattern of plant–microbe nutrient limitation is consistent across forest biomes and the associated potential mechanisms remain largely unclear, limiting us to better understand the biogeochemical processes under future c...

Antimicrobial peptides are a promising new class of antimicrobials that could address the antibiotic resistance crisis, which poses a major threat to human health. These peptides are present in all kingdoms of life, but especially in microorganisms, having multiple origins in diverse taxa. To date, there has been no global study on the diversity of...

The Mediterranean is among the regions predicted to be most affected by climate change due to rising temperatures and increasing frequency as well as intensity of extreme weather events, such as drought. These shifts in climatic conditions might lead to changes in species community composition by enabling the increase of drought-tolerant species at...

Aim Theoretical, experimental and observational studies have shown that biodiversity–ecosystem functioning (BEF) relationships are influenced by functional community structure through two mutually non‐exclusive mechanisms: (1) the dominance effect (which relates to the traits of the dominant species); and (2) the niche partitioning effect [which re...

Climatic warming has been hypothesized to accelerate organic matter decomposition by soil microorganisms and thereby enhance carbon (C) release to the atmosphere. However, the long-term consequences of soil warming on belowground biota interactions are poorly understood. Here we investigate how geothermal warming by 6 °C for more than 50 years affe...

Arid and semi-arid forests are important carbon sinks, with implications for the global carbon balance. However, the impacts of climate warming on the growth of arid and semi-arid forest tree species and ecosystem carbon sink dynamics remain uncertain because the effects of the complex interactions between precipitation and temperature on xylem phe...

The soil freeze-thaw cycle in the permafrost regions has a significant impact on regional surface energy and water balance. Although increasing efforts have been made to understand the responses of spring thawing to climate change, the mechanisms controlling the global interannual variability of the start date of permafrost frozen (SOF) remain uncl...

Background: Environmental stresses pose a significant threat to plant growth and ecosystem productivity, particularly in arid lands that are more susceptible to climate change. Strigolactones (SLs), carotenoid-derived plant hormones, have emerged as a potential tool for mitigating environmental stresses. Methods: This review aimed to gather info...

The status of plant and microbial nutrient limitation have profound impacts on ecosystem carbon cycle in permafrost areas, which store large amounts of carbon and experience pronounced climatic warming. Despite the long-term standing paradigm assumes that cold ecosystems primarily have nitrogen deficiency, large-scale empirical tests of microbial n...

Canopies play an important role in nitrogen (N) redistribution in forest ecosystems, and ignoring the canopy’s role might bias estimates of the ecological consequences of anthropogenic atmospheric N deposition. We investigated the effects of the approach of N addition (Canopy addition vs. Understory addition) and level of N addition (25 kg N ha-1yr...

Monitoring gross primary production (GPP) is necessary for quantifying the terrestrial carbon balance. The near-infrared reflectance of vegetation (NIRv) has been proven to be a good predictor of GPP. Given that radiation powers photosynthesis, we hypothesized that (i) the addition of photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) information to NIRv wo...

The stability of aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) is critical for ecosystem functions and services, and have been studied across a wide range of ecosystems. An intriguing and challenging question emerging from these studies is how precipitation fluctuations, especially extreme precipitation, affect the temporal stability of ANPP in alpin...

Foliar traits such as specific leaf area (SLA), leaf nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations play an important role in plant economic strategies and ecosystem functioning. Various global maps of these foliar traits have been generated using statistical upscaling approaches based on in-situ trait observations.Here, we intercompare such global...

There is increasing evidence to suggest that soil nutrient availability can limit the carbon sink capacity of forests, a particularly relevant issue considering today's changing climate. This question is especially important in the tropics, where most part of the Earth's plant biomass is stored. To assess whether tropical forest growth is limited b...

As awareness of the importance of anthropogenic climate change has increased, attention is being focused on “compound extremes,” such as co-occurring soil drought (low amounts of soil moisture, SM) and atmospheric aridity (high vapor-pressure deficits, VPD), because of the disproportionate impacts of such extreme conditions on natural and societal...

Microclimate research gained renewed interest over the last decade and its importance for many ecological processes is increasingly being recognized. Consequently, the call for high-resolution microclimatic temperature grids across broad spatial extents is becoming more pressing to improve ecological models. Here, we provide a new set of open-acces...

As Earth's climate has varied strongly through geological time, studying the impacts of past climate change on biodiversity helps to understand the risks from future climate change. However, it remains unclear how paleoclimate shapes spatial variation in biodiversity. Here, we assessed the influence of Quaternary climate change on spatial dissimila...

Livestock grazing of grassland ecosystems may induce shifts in microbe community traits and soil carbon (C) cycling; however, impacts of grassland management (grazing) on soil C- microbe community trait (microbial biomass, diversity, community structure, and enzyme activity) relationships are unclear. To address this, we conducted a global meta-ana...

Imbalanced nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) depositions are profoundly shifting terrestrial ecosystem biogeochemical processes. However, how P addition and its interaction with N addition influence the release of litter carbon (C), N, P, and especially metal nutrients in subtropical forests remains unclear. Herein, a two-year field litterbag experim...

Carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) stoichiometry and their allometric relationships in soil and plants are hot topics that attract a lot of attention, while those rocks that form soils are often neglected. Weathering is a common geological phenomenon that may significantly influence the nutrient composition and release of nutrients from r...

Tropical primary forests are being destroyed at an alarming rate and converted for other land uses which is expected to greatly influence soil carbon (C) cycling. However, our understanding of how tropical forest conversions affect the accumulation of compounds in soil functional C pools remains unclear. Here, we collected soils from primary forest...

The massive use of fertilizers during the last decades allowed a great increase in the global capacity of food production. However, in the last years, several studies highlight the inefficiency and country asymmetries in the use of these fertilizers that generated environmental problems, soil nutritional imbalances and not optimal food production....

Global greening, characterized by an increase in leaf area index (LAI), implies an increase in foliar carbon (C). Whether this increase in foliar C under climate change is due to higher photosynthesis or to higher allocation of C to leaves remains unknown. Here, we explored the trends in foliar C accumulation and allocation during leaf green‐up fro...