Rodriguez-Caballero Emilio

• Environmental Sciences
• Ramon y Cajal at University of Almería

Drylands are characterised by spatially discontinuous vegetation coverage. Consequently, during most rainfalls, runoff is generated in open areas and redistributed to vegetation. This transfer of water and nutrients from source to sink areas has been identified as a key ecohydrological process modulating drylands functioning. However, there are onl...

Water scarcity poses a significant life constraint in global drylands that determines species adaptations and mosaic of exposed bare areas and vegetation patches. Runoff‐water redistribution resulting from this spatial configuration has been suggested as a key process controlling water availability for vegetation and ecosystem functioning. However,...

Aims Biocrusts, communities dominated by mosses, lichens, cyanobacteria, algae, and fungi living on the soil surface, constitute a vital biotic component of dryland ecosystems that play critical roles in maintaining their structure and functioning. However, there are substantial knowledge gaps regarding the global distribution of biocrusts, which h...

In drylands, extreme environmental conditions pose a challenge for restoration, especially on a large scale. Direct seeding is the most cost-effective approach to restore large areas, but it requires improvements to enhance seedling survival and establishment. For this purpose, biopriming seeds with cyanobacteria is promising due to their plant gro...

Water-dependent amphibians often present marginal populations in arid and semi-arid regions of the world. This is the case of the Mediterranean tree frog ( Hyla meridionalis ) in the southeast of Iberia, where the species is currently threatened. Here we provide an update of the distribution of Mediterranean tree frog in the region by surveying in...

Water is a limiting resource for dryland vegetation, and vegetation biomass, composition, and phenology are directly dependent on highly variable water availability and close linkages between water availability and vegetation dynamics that characterized arid and semiarid ecosystems. Dryland perennial vegetation commonly forms isolated patches inter...

The spatial cover of biocrusts represents a suitable habitat for the activity of soil microorganisms in semi-arid and arid regions. Microorganisms are one of the essential components of soil quality. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the processes of biocrust habitat formation in landforms and their mutual relationship with soil properties....

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) form a layer of only one to few centimeters depth on the soil surface and occur mostly in hot and cold deserts. Biocrusts have a major impact on different processes in these ecosystems, like carbon and nitrogen cycling, biodiversity preservation, erosion protection and soil dust emission reduction, but also react...

This study aims to conduct a spatiotemporal analysis of the long-range transportation of volcanic ashes that originates from the eruption of the Sangay volcano and reached Guayaquil during the months of June 2020; September 2020; and April 2021. The particulate matter data (PM2.5) was obtained using a low-cost air quality sensor. During the wet sea...

Context Macrochloa tenacissima (L.) Kunth (= Stipa tenacissima L.), also defined as Alpha grass steppes, form the main dryland ecosystems throughout the Mediterranean region. Recent studies suggest that ongoing climate change will lead to a sequence of changes in them, including modifications in the composition of vegetation and reduction in vegeta...

Forest decline events have increased worldwide over the last decades being holm oak (Quercus ilex L.) one of the tree species with the most worrying trends across Europe. Since this is one of the tree species with the southernmost distribution within the European continent, its vulnerability to climate change is a phenomenon of enormous ecological...

Degradation of ecosystems can occur when certain ecological thresholds are passed below which ecosystem responses remain within ‘safe ecological limits’. Ecosystems such as drylands are sensitive to both aridification and grazing, but the combined effects of such factors on the emergence of ecological thresholds beyond which ecosystem degradation o...

Landscapes can lead to different emotions towards nature that in turn shape people's environmental behavior and decision processes. This study explores the role of emotions that Mediterranean landscapes foster in people and to what extent these emotions are associated with human-nature connectedness (HNC). We conducted 176 face-to-face surveys to e...

Drylands are ecohydrologically-coupled ecosystems whose functioning depends on the interplay between hydrological connectivity between runoff source areas and the capacity of vegetation to retain water fluxes and associated resources. In this study we present a new easily applicable methodology for the ecohydrological characterization of dryland ec...

Sea level rise has accelerated during recent decades, exceeding rates recorded during the previous two millennia, and as a result many coastal habitats and species around the globe are being impacted. This situation is expected to worsen due to anthropogenically induced climate change. However, the magnitude and relevance of expected increase in se...

Forest decline events have increased worldwide over the last decades, being holm oak one of the tree species with the most worrying trends across Europe. Previous research identified drought and soil pathogens as the main causes behind holm oak decline. However, despite tree health loss is a multifactorial phenomenon where abiotic and biotic factor...

Nonvascular photoautotrophs (NVP), including bryophytes, lichens, terrestrial algae, and cyanobacteria, are increasingly recognized as being essential to ecosystem functioning in many regions of the world. Current research suggests that climate change may pose a substantial threat to NVP, but the extent to which this will affect the associated ecos...

Emerging microbial engineering solutions have the potential to improve the restoration of degraded drylands and boost soil functioning, which is an urgent need reflected by studies highlighting already 20% of the global surface has crossed ecosystem thresholds which will lead to land degradation. Among these new strategies, biocrust organisms inocu...

Aim Lichens and mosses play important functional roles in all terrestrial ecosystems, particularly in tundra and drylands. As with all taxa, to maintain their current niche in a changing climate, lichens and mosses will have to migrate. However, there are no published estimates of future habitat suitability or necessary rates of migration for membe...

Human population has become the predominant force causing the decline of ecosystems and biodiversity. People’s disconnection from nature has been proposed as one of the roots underpinning human actions that lead to this environmental degradation. The lack of interaction with nature can reduce our emotional affinity towards the environment and clear...

Ecuador, located in the Neotropics, has 66 protected natural areas, which represent about 13.77% of its overall territory. The Reserva Ecológica Arenillas reserve (REAr), located in southwestern Ecuador, protects an area of dry forest, coastal thorn forest, and mangroves. This dry forest is part of the Pacific equatorial core and is included the Tu...

Population monitoring is essential to determine different aspects of the ecology and conservation of the species. In anurans, recording the acoustic activity of choruses allows surveying populations. Therefore, knowing the timing of male calls is fundamental to achieve this goal. Here we monitored calling activity of the Mediterranean tree frog ( H...

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) cover ~12% of the global land surface. They are formed by an intimate association between soil particles, photoautotrophic and heterotrophic organisms, and they effectively stabilize the soil surface of drylands. Quantitative information on the impact of biocrusts on the global cycling and climate effects of aeoli...

Studies of biological soil crusts (biocrusts) have proliferated over the last few decades. The biocrust literature has broadened, with more studies assessing and describing the function of a variety of biocrust communities in a broad range of biomes and habitats and across a large spectrum of disciplines, and also by the incorporation of biocrusts...

Sea level rise has accelerated during recent decades, exceeding rates recorded during the previous two millennia1. Many coastal habitats and species around the globe are vanishing2. This situation is expected to worsen due to anthropogenically induced climate change. However, the magnitude and relevance of expected increase in sea level rise (SLR)...

Land degradation is one of the main threats to dryland sustainability in the next decades, hence restoration of the degraded land from drylands is an urgent need to maintain ecosystem functionality and their ability to provide ecosystem services. To achieve this goal, restoration practices should pursue the recovery of the main ground components, a...

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) form a regular and relevant feature in drylands, as they stabilize the soil, fix nutrients, and influence water cycling. However, biocrust forming organisms have been shown to be dramatically vulnerable to climate and land use change occurring in these regions. In this study, we used Normalized Difference Vegetati...

Catchment asymmetry is a fairly frequent phenomenon on a global scale but the main causes leading to its formation are still not well understood. Where the intervention of structural or tectonic causes is not relevant, asymmetry seems to result from differential erosion between opposite slopes that flow into the same channel, which is frequently as...

Soil respiration is an important component of the carbon (C) cycle and a major contributor to total ecosystem C efflux. Knowledge of the factors that drive soil respiration in drylands is limited, despite these regions represent more than 40% of the Earth land’s surface. In these environments, biocrusts play an important role in CO2 exchange toward...

Las biocostras son comunidades de organismos autótrofos y heterótrofos que viven en la superficie del 12% de los suelos de la Tierra, donde actúan como ingenieras del ecosistema. Son muy sensibles al cambio climático y a las alteraciones ocasionadas por diferentes actividades antrópicas. En este trabajo, revisamos los impactos de ambos tipos de per...

Aim Ecogeographical rules link animal colours, especially those produced by melanin pigments, with variation in environmental conditions over wide geographical scales. In particular, Gloger’s rule, coined for endothermic animals in two versions, suggests that tegument darkness should increase at high temperature, as well as in highly humid environm...

Cryptogamic organisms such as bryophytes and lichens cover most surfaces within tropical forests, yet their impact on the emission of biogenic volatile organic compounds is unknown. These compounds can strongly influence atmospheric oxidant levels as well as secondary organic aerosol concentrations, and forest canopy leaves have been considered the...

Agriculture is one of the most widespread human activities and has the greatest impact on terrestrial ecosystems, as it transforms natural ecosystems into artificial landscapes using, in many cases, large amounts of pesticides as well as overexploiting natural resources. Therefore, for effective biodiversity conservation, it is necessary to include...

The focus of this study is the assessment of total suspended particles (TSP) and particulate matter (PM) with various aerodynamic diameters in ambient air in Guayaquil, a city in Ecuador that features a tropical climate. The urban annual mean concentrations of TSP (Total Suspended Particles), and particle matter (PM) with various aerodynamic diamet...

The Mediterranean region is experiencing a stronger warming effect than other regions, which has generated a cascade of negative impacts on productivity, biodiversity, and stability of the ecosystem. To monitor ecosystem status and dynamics, aboveground biomass (AGB) is a good indicator, being a surrogate of many ecosystem functions and services an...

Links between water and carbon (C) cycles in drylands are strongly regulated by biocrusts. These widespread communities in the intershrub spaces of drylands are able to use non-rainfall water inputs (NRWI) (fog, dewfall and water vapour) to become active and fix carbon dioxide (CO2), converting biocrusts into the main soil C contributors during per...

Landslides are geomorphological processes that consist in the mobilization of ground, rocks, debris, and mud downslope that cause local erosion problems. The eroded materials can be transported downstream, which implies an additional environmental risk that might lead to catastrophic and significant economic and human losses. Rainfall is usually th...

Badlands are landforms that occur all over the World. In the Mediterranean region, badlands are found in both dry (arid and semi‐arid) and wet (subhumid and humid) environments, and are characterized by complex hydro‐geomorphological dynamics, high intense erosion processes and extreme sediment yield. Understanding the impact of Global Change is ke...

Vegetation generally appears scattered in drylands. Its structure, composition and spatial patterns are key controls of biotic interactions, water, and nutrient cycles. Applying segmentation methods to very high-resolution images for monitoring changes in vegetation cover can provide relevant information for dryland conservation ecology. For this r...

The mhorr gazelle (Nanger dama mhorr) is the westernmost-distributed mama gazelle subspecies and it has been considered extinct in the wild since 1968. Much of the survival of this subspecies depends on its ex situ captive population and future reintroduction projects. However, this subspecies disappeared before it could be well studied; and most o...

. Los cambios ocurrieron principalmente en las zonas no protegidas y en el BP-Tahuin, y fueron consecuencia de una agresiva expansión agropecuaria y aumento de viviendas, agroindustrias, carreteras y servicios públicos. Esto supuso una pérdida de la capacidad del territorio para proveer muchos de los servicios básicos de regulación frente a servici...

Cyanobacteria inoculation has recently become an innovative biotechnological tool for restoring degraded arid soils. A major challenge for researchers, however, is the search for suitable species able to cope with water stress under field conditions. The aim of this study was to test the effect of water availability on induced biocrust growth in th...

Globally, most bare-looking areas in dryland regions are covered by biocrusts which play a crucial role in modifying several soil surface properties and driving key ecosystem processes. These keystone communities face important threats (e.g. climate change) that place their conservation at risk and in turn the sustainability of the ecosystems they...

The capture and use of water are critically important in drylands, which collectively constitute Earth's largest biome. Drylands will likely experience lower and more unreliable rainfall as climatic conditions change over the next century. Dryland soils support a rich community of microphytic organisms (biocrusts), which are critically important be...

Drylands encompass over 40% of terrestrial ecosystems and face significant anthropogenic degradation causing a loss of ecosystem integrity, services, and deterioration of social‐ecological systems. To combat this degradation, some dryland restoration efforts have focused on the use of biological soil crusts (biocrusts): complex communities of cyano...

Arid and semi-arid ecosystems are characterized by patchy vegetation and variable resource availability. The interplant spaces of these ecosystems are very often covered by cyanobacteria-dominated biocrusts, which are the primary colonizers of terrestrial ecosystems and key in facilitating the succession of other biocrust organisms and plants. Cyan...

En las tres últimas décadas el uso del suelo en el Ecuador ha experimentado importantes cambios, que incluyen procesos de transición inestables y una explotación desmedida de los recursos forestales. Se estima que el 47% del territorio del país tiene problemas de degradación de la tierra. Para frenar y compensar las altas tasas de deforestación y d...

Aims A possible approach to restore drylands is to recover biocrusts by inoculating cyanobacteria. Many studies have demonstrated the ability of cyanobacteria to successfully colonize soil and improve its functions. However, most studies have focused on the abiotic factors influencing the inoculation success, overlooking biotic factors. We examined...

Understanding the importance of biotic interactions in driving the distribution and abundance of species is a central goal of plant ecology. Early vascular plants likely colonized land occupied by biocrusts — photoautotrophic, surface‐dwelling soil communities comprised of cyanobacteria, bryophytes, lichens and fungi — suggesting biotic interaction...

Runoff and erosion models demonstrate the importance of biocrusts in the spatial distribution of sediment fluxes within the landscape

Dryland ecosystems are highly vulnerable to human activity and the impact of climate change. Characterized by sparse low vegetation cover, the open spaces in between plants are usually exposed to erosion leading to loss of vital resources, decreasing soil fertility and limiting plant productivity. However, interplant spaces in drylands, when left u...

The Amazon rain forest experiences the combined pressures from human-made deforestation and progressing climate change, causing severe and potentially disruptive perturbations of the ecosystem's integrity and stability. To intensify research on critical aspects of Amazonian biosphere–atmosphere exchange, the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) has...

Biological soil crust, or biocrust communities, are the dominating lifeform in many extreme habitats, such as arid and semiarid badlands, where water scarcity and highly erodible substrates limit vegetation cover. While climate, soil and biotic factors have been described as environmental filters influencing biocrust distribution in such biomes, li...

Chlorophyll a concentration (Chla) is a well-proven proxy of biocrust development, photosynthetic organisms' status, and recovery monitoring after environmental disturbances. However, laboratory methods for the analysis of chlorophyll require destructive sampling and are expensive and time consuming. Indirect estimation of chlorophyll a by means of...

Reintroductions continue to be an important conservation action for endangered species. Until this, all reintroduction projects for Mhorr gazelle (Nanger dama mhorr) had remained at the stage where the animals live in fenced protected areas of different sizes. This study describes the first experience of reintroduction of a group of 24 Mhorr gazell...

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) occur within drylands throughout the world, covering ~12% of the global terrestrial soil surface. Their occurrence in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula has rarely been reported and their spatial distribution, diversity, and microbial composition remained largely unexplored. We investigated biocrusts at six diff...

The Succulent Karoo is characterised by a dense coverage of biological soil crusts (biocrusts) belonging to different types and successional stages. Whereas the Soebatsfontein region hosts cyanobacteria-dominated and minor amounts of lichen- and bryophyte-dominated biocrusts, the Knersvlakte comprises a rich cover of hypolithic crusts growing on th...

Buried soil crusts can be interpreted as signs of recent past erosive processes in soils where present visual conditions and hydrological monitoring results state as stable surfaces. Soil micromorphology of many thin sections from the Tabernas desert badlands provided the material for this study.

Structure of cyanobacteria crusts are contained of a variety of species that having a range of attributes which contributed to their resilience and survival in arid and hyper-arid environments. Extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) produced by cyanobacteria have adhesive attributes that binds non-aggregated soil particles into a protective encru...

Biocrusts are a critical biological community that represents one of the most important photosynthetic biomass pools in dryland regions. Thus, they play an important role in CO2 fluxes in these regions, where water availability limits vascular plant growth and development. The effect of biocrusts on CO2 fluxes was expected to be controlled by the i...

To successfully restore drylands, where the scarcity of water is one of the main limiting factors for plant survival, water inputs should be enhanced as much as possible. A specific type of water harvesting that concentrates runoff generated in bare areas upslope (runoff source areas) in a planting area downslope (runoff sink area) is an effective...

runoff generation in badlands

Increased soil erosion, pressure on agricultural land, and climate change highlight the need for new management to mitigate soil loss. Management strategies should utilize comparable datasets of long‐term soil erosion monitoring across multiple environments. Adaptive soil erosion management in regions with intense precipitation require an understan...

In recent years, soil inoculation with cyanobacteria has become one of the most promising biotechnological strategies for restoring soil functionality in degraded drylands because of their critical role in increasing soil fertility and preventing erosion. Nevertheless, in order to fully exploit this biotechnology on a large scale, it must still be...

The Amazon rain forest experiences the combined pressures from man-made deforestation and progressing climate change, causing severe and potentially disruptive perturbations of the ecosystem's integrity and stability. To intensify research on critical aspects of Amazonian biosphere-atmosphere exchange, the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) has b...

A wind erosion research was carried out in a wind tunnel where sediment samples acquired were studied by an artificial vision camera. These images could be enlarged for further analysis. Image analyses were mainly colorimetry, number of particles present and their size. Soil wind erodibility was analyzed with the image analyses supported by other l...

Dryland vegetation is limited by water scarcity, and usually appears in the form of sparsely distributed patches within a heterogeneous unvegetated matrix often covered by biological soil crust. Biocrusts usually act as runoff sources, whereas vegetation acts as sinks, reinfiltrating most of the run‐on from upstream biocrusted areas. Alteration of...

Photoautotrophic surface communities forming biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are crucial for soil stability as well as water, nutrient and trace gas cycling at regional and global scales. Quantitative information on their global coverage and the environmental factors driving their distribution patterns, however, are not readily available. We use...

Desert varnishes are dark rock coatings observed in arid environments and might resemble Mn-rich coatings found on Martian rocks. Their formation mechanism is not fully understood and the possible microbial involvement is under debate. In this study we applied DNA metagenomic sequencing of varnish and surrounding soil to evaluate the composition of...

A combination of high temporal variability and spatial heterogeneity of rainfall, soil surfaces, and plant cover is the cause of the complex hydrological response in arid/semiarid regions. Under these premises, long-term monitoring is necessary to capture drivers controlling the response of these areas and to be able to model and predict their reac...

The causes of agricultural land expansion and its impacts on dryland ecosystems such as the oasis regions of Southern Tunisia, are fundamental problems challenging the sustainability of irrigated agriculture on water limited ecosystems. Consequently, a thorough understanding of this phenomenon is necessary to avoid future problems. With the objecti...

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are communities of cyanobacteria, algae, microfungi, lichens and bryophytes in varying proportions, which live within or immediately on top of the uppermost millimeters of the soil in arid and semiarid regions. As biocrusts are highly relevant for ecosystem processes like carbon, nitrogen, and water cycling, a cor...

This chapter focuses on the use of optical remote sensing in the wavelength domain of visible and near infrared and shortwave infrared. It gives an overview of the principal issues concerning the use of these techniques for soil mapping and monitoring, including different spectral (multispectral and hyperspectral data) and spatial scales (laborator...