M Belen Hinojosa

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• Environmental Sciences
• Professor (Associate) at University of Castilla-La Mancha

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a global threat to human, animal and environmental health. Among the multidisciplinary tasks aimed at collectively tackling the AMR crisis, surveillance, research and education stand as major priorities. Based on a crowdsourcing research strategy, the MicroMundo project, a partner of the Tiny Earth initiative in...

The high Andean páramos (AnP) are unique ecosystems that harbor high biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services, such as water supply and regulation, as well as carbon sequestration. In southern Ecuador, this ecosystem is threatened by anthropogenic burning activities to create pastures and agricultural land. However, knowledge of the ef...

Understanding how fire severity affects resprouting plants during post-fire regeneration is key to anticipating Mediterranean vegetation vulnerability in a context of increasingly large fires with high intensity and severity due to climate change. Here, we monitored the water status, leaf gas exchange, and plant growth in holm oaks (Quercus ilex) o...

Fire frequency might increase in many fire-dominated ecosystems of the world due to the combined effects of global warming, land-use change and increased human pressures. Understanding how changes in fire frequency can affect the main soil biogeochemical dynamics as well as the microbial community in the long term is utmost important. Here we deter...

Uno de los principales problemas con el que los docentes nos encontramos de forma habitual es la falta de implicación de los estudiantes en su propio proceso de aprendizaje. Esto suele traducirse en que, a pesar de tener a su disposición una considerable variedad de materiales para trabajar, nuestros estudiantes suelen conformarse con realizar las...

Humid montane scrublands (HMs) represent one of the least studied ecosystems in Ecuador, which in the last decade have been seriously threatened by the increase in wildfires. Our main objective was to evaluate the effects of wildfire severity on physicochemical soil properties in the HMs of southern Ecuador. For this purpose, fire severity was meas...

Understanding the effects of fire history on soil processes is key to characterise their resistance and resilience under future fire events. Wildfires produce pyrogenic carbonaceous material (PCM) that is incorporated into the soil, playing a critical role in the global carbon (C) cycle, but its interactions with soil processes are poorly understoo...

Es un documento que presenta una visión y una serie de recomendaciones dirigidas a todas aquellas personas y colectivos que quieran diseñar e implementar un proyecto de ciencia ciudadana a escala local para la observación del cambio climático. Nace con la vocación de ser útil para el diseño y desarrollo de proyectos dirigidos a la observación del c...

Changes in climate, land use, and land management impact the occurrence and severity of wildland fires in many parts of the world. This is particularly evident in Europe, where ongoing changes in land use have strongly modified fire patterns over the last decades. Although satellite data by the European Forest Fire Information System provide large-...

Grasslands are widespread elements of urban greenspace providing recreational, psychological and aesthetic benefits to city residents. Two urban grassland types of contrasting management dominate urban greenspaces: frequently mown, species-poor short-cut lawns and less intensively managed, near-natural tall-grass meadows. The higher conservation va...

Spatial heterogeneity of soil properties plays a major role in regulating ecosystem structure and functioning. In general, soil resources accumulate beneath woody plant-covered patches more than in the open interspace, making them function as fertility islands. Whilst wildfire is a common disturbance, little information is available on the role of...

Increasing urbanization worldwide calls for more sustainable urban development. Simultaneously, the global biodiversity crisis accentuates the need of fostering biodiversity within cities. Policies supporting urban nature conservation need to understand people’s acceptance of biodiversity-friendly greenspace management. We surveyed more than 2,000...

The effects of drought on soil dynamics after fire are poorly known, particularly its longer‐term (i.e., years) legacy effects once rainfall returns to normal. Understanding this is particularly important for nutrient‐poor soils in semi‐arid regions affected by fire, in which rainfall is projected to decrease with climate change. Here, we studied t...

Climate change in subtropical areas, like the Mediterranean, is projected to decrease precipitation and to lengthen the seasonal drought period. Fire danger is also projected to increase under the most severe conditions. Little is known about the effects of increasing drought and, particularly, its legacy when precipitation resumes to normal, on th...

Olive groves are undergoing a marked change in the way that inter-row land is managed. The current regulation and recommendation encourages the implementation of plant cover, mainly to improve soil fertility and reduce erosion. However, there is no quantitative information on the dynamics and pools of soil organic carbon (SOC) fractions of differen...

Olive oil orchard occupies a great percentage of the cropland in southern Spain. Thus, changes in nitrogen (N) fertilization might have a great effect on N dynamics at least at regional scale, which should be investigated for a sustainable N fertilization program. In situ net N mineralization (NM) and nitrification (NN) were investigated during a y...

Prescribed fire Soil Enzyme activity Nutrients The aim of this work is to evaluate the changes in soil properties that occur immediately, one and two years after prescribed fires carried out in a Pinus pinaster Ait. forest (M.U.P. Sierra Alta, Ciudad Real, Spain). The soil variables determined were pH, soil organic matter, C.I.C., ammonium, nitrate...

Fire is a major ecosystem driver, causing significant changes in soil nutrients and microbial community structure and functionality. Post-fire soil dynamics can vary depending on rainfall patterns, although variations in response to drought are poorly known. This is particularly important in areas with poor soils and limited rainfall, like arid and...

Qué son los ciclos de nutrientes y qué representan para el funcionamiento de los bosques Todos los seres vivos necesitan, aparte de car-bono, hidrógeno y oxígeno que son sus constituyentes mayoritarios, de aproximadamente otra veintena más de elementos, en proporciones variables, para formar sus tejidos y llevar a cabo los procesos metabólicos. Alg...

Little research has been done to study the combined fire-drought impacts on the structure and functioning of Mediterranean fire-prone ecosystems. In this study we have evaluated post-fire patterns of soil phosphorus (P) availability and transformation rates in a Mediterranean shrubland subjected to different drought treatments. Precipitation was ma...

This report shows notable improvements of soil physical, chemical, and biological properties after long-term soil application of olive mill pomace compost. About four million tons of olive mill pomace is produced annually in Andalusia, Spain. Olive mill pomace is a main by-product of the olive oil extraction industry. Composting is a promising stra...

P oder estimar con precisión los cambios ocurridos en los suelos tras un incendio forestal es esen-cial para programar las tareas de restau-ración de manera eficaz. La gestión post-incendio y los tratamientos paliativos a realizar tras un incendio (repoblaciones, extracciones madereras, protección con-tra la erosión, mapas de intervención prioritar...

Re-vegetation of trace element contaminated soils can alter the pH and chelating capacity in the rhizosphere, increasing the mobility of pollutants, which, in turn, may impact on rhizosphere ecology. In this study a short-term pot experiment was carried out in order to investigate the multi-factorial effects of: buffering capacity (sandy-loam and l...

The aim of this chapter is to combine perspectives developed in soil ecology, microbiology and biochemistry into a common framework for evaluating the health of soils polluted with heavy metals. The use of microbial properties as indicators of soil health has been promoted by the recent development of effective methods for studying the diversity a...

The worldwide phenomenon of shrub encroachment in grass-dominated dryland ecosystems is commonly associated with desertification. Studies of the purported desertification effects associated with shrub encroachment are often restricted to relatively few study areas, and document a narrow range of possible impacts upon biota and ecosystem processes....

Anthropic perturbations on natural ecosystems generally promote a loss of spatial hetero-geneity at the landscape level and a decay of habitat diversity, both of them essential attributes to maintain ecosystem integrity in the long term. In order to understand these processes, a multiescalar approach to the study of community diversity, from the sp...

There is growing interest in the application of soil enzymes and nematode community indices as indicators of changes in soil quality under contrasting management practices. Although an abundant literature on this subject has arisen during the last 10 years, most of the studies have focused on measuring many soil quality indicators at a single or a...

Linking biogeochemical variability and microbial community structure in forest soils: Abies pinsapo-fir forests as a study case. Traditionally, soil has been considered as a "black box", connected to the rest of the ecosystem by input and output fluxes, where nutrients are transformed mainly through processes controlled by unknown microorganisms. T...

There is growing interest in the applications of soil enzymes as early indicators of soil quality change under contrasting agricultural management practices. However, despite there being an abundant literature on this subject, most comparative assessments have been based on a limited number of experimental farms and, therefore, conclusions are not...

Soil biogeochemical functions in flood-plains are controlled mainly by interactions between river flooding dynamics and vegetation change. This generates a pattern of landscape cross-sectional and longitudinal heterogeneity in texture, microtopography and plant cover. Agricultural uses restrain such mechanisms, eliminating the mosaic of soil enviro...

A laboratory study was conducted to evaluate the response of soil enzyme activities (acid and alkaline phosphatase, β-glucosidase, arylsulfatase, urease and dehydrogenase) to different levels of trace elements pollution in soils representative of the area affected by the pyrite sludge mining spill of Aznalcóllar (Guadiamar basin, SW Spain). Three u...

A pesar de su escasa visibilidad, la recuperación de procesos biogeoquímicos esenciales (suministro de nutrientes y reciclaje de la materia orgánica), desempeñados por la maquinaria ecológica del suelo, es fundamental en la restauración de los ecosistemas. En el marco del SECOVER, se ha efectuado el seguimiento de la evolución general 2000-2004 de...

Resumen El suelo es un sistema vivo, dinámico y no renovable, cuya condición y funcionamiento es clave para la producción de alimentos y para el mantenimiento de la calidad ambiental a escalas local, regional y global. No sólo es la base para la agricultura y para los diferentes ecosistemas, sino que además de él depende toda la vida del planeta. D...

Heavy metal pollution of soil is of concern for human health and ecosystem function. The soil microbial community should be a sensitive indicator of metal contamination effects on bioavailability and biogeochemical processes. Simple methods are needed to determine the degree of in situ pollution and effectiveness of remediating metal-contaminated s...

We assessed the soil status, in terms of microbiological functionality, in a riparian ecosystem affected by the Aznalcollar mine spill, shortly after restoration practices were undertaken (withdrawal of heavy metal-rich muds and top-soil, and liming of the remaining surface soil). We measured general (Nmineralization, nitrification, denitrification...

Heavy metal contamination can inhibit soil functions but it is often difficult to determine the degree of pollution or when soil reclamation is complete. Enzyme assays offer potential as indicators of biological functioning of soils. However, antecedent water content of soil samples may affect the outcome of biological measurements. In Mediterranea...

This study focused on the potential of using soil enzyme activities and general microbiological rates (respiration, N-mineralisation, nitrification) to evaluate the quality of soils affected by a pyrite mud spill which contained high concentrations of heavy metals. The quality of soils after restoration was estimated by comparing enzyme activities...