Nathali Machado de Lima’s research while affiliated with UNSW Sydney and other places

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Publications (3)


Simplifying Remote Sensing of Biocrusts with Drone Imagery and Machine Learning
  • Preprint

January 2025

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2 Reads

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David Eldridge

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Nathali Machado de Lima

Location of Fowlers Gap Arid Research Station (x), within semi‐arid region (brown outline), with its daily mean maximum (red) and minimum (black) temperatures in 2022, and mean and median monthly rainfall (2004–2023).
(A) Satellite image of Fowlers Gap Arid Zone Research Station, with the five sites (brown crosses), (B) each including five groundcover types (B—Bareground, Bio—Biocrust, G—Perrenial Grass, M—Maireana sp., A—Acacia sp.) with an ambient treatment (flag) and a heat treatment of with an open top chamber (OTC). (C) OTC (75 cm diameter), designed to increase temperature by 1°C–3°C, with circular openings (30 cm diameter) allowing rainfall, and soil collected only directly under the opening.
Scatterplot showing differences between daily maximum (top) and minimum (bottom) temperatures of air (blue), ambient soil (black) and heat treatment soil (orange) treatments on bareground for the first 3 months of the experiment, December 2021 to March 2022.
Boxplot comparing soil temperature at 1 cm depth at mid to late morning, under the five groundcover types (n = 40). Median of samples is shown by the bold horizontal line within the boxes. Significant results are marked as **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
nMDS plots using Bray‐Curtis dissimilarity calculation of ASV relative abundance in samples showing soil bacterial communities associated with groundcover types, including all samples in relation to (A) groundcover type and (B) to heat treatment; (C) ambient samples of soil bacterial communities in relation to groundcover type and; (D) only heat treatment samples of soil bacterial communities in relation to groundcover type.

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Soil Bacterial Biodiversity in Drylands Is Dependent on Groundcover Under Increased Temperature
  • Article
  • Full-text available

November 2024

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66 Reads

Introduction Drylands are a major terrestrial biome, supporting much of the earth's population. Soil microbial communities maintain drylands’ ecosystem functions but are threatened by increasing temperature. Groundcover, such as vegetation or biocrust, drives the patchiness of drylands' soil microbial communities, reflected in fertile islands and rhizosphere soil microbial associations. Groundcover may shelter soil microbial communities from increasingly harsh temperatures under climate change, mitigating effects on microclimate, but few data on the microbial response exists. Understanding the fine‐scale interactions between plants and soil is crucial to improving conservation and management of drylands under climate change. Materials and Methods We used open‐top chambers to experimentally increase the temperature on five key groundcover species found in arid Australia, and are commonly present in drylands worldwide; bareground (controls), biocrust, perennial grass, Maireana sp. shrub, Acacia aneura trees, testing soil bacterial diversity and community composition response to the effects of increased temperatures. Results We found that groundcover was a stronger driver of soil bacterial composition than increased temperature, but this response varied with groundcover type. Larger groundcover types (Acacia and Maireana) buffered the impact of heat stress on the soil bacterial community. Bacterial diversity and species richness declined with heat stress affecting the bacterial communities associated with perennial grass, Maireana and Acacia. We identified 16 bacterial phyla significantly associated with groundcover types in ambient treatment. But, under heat stress, only three phyla, Verrumicrobiota, Patescibacteria, and Abditibacteriota, had significantly different relative abundance under groundcovers, Acacia and Maireana, compared to bareground controls. The soil bacterial community associated with perennial grass was most affected by increased temperature. Conclusion Our findings suggest soil communities may become more homogeneous under climate change, with compositional change, rather than diversity, tracking soil response to heat stress.

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