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• What are the new developments since the beginning of ExpeER?
"There are two prevailing methods of afforestation in the semi-arid areas of the northern Negev Desert:
(1) Rain Fed Afforestation (RFA) where direct rainfall is the main water resource and planted trees replace the natural growing shrubs;
(2) Runoff Harvesting Afforestation (RHA) that spatially integrates natural and human-made systems in order to harvest runoff water from the natural system and concentrate it into water-enriched patches where trees are planted. The study aims to compare between the two afforestation systems and also between them and the adjacent natural areas.
The results show that:
- the comparisons within RFA and the adjacent shrubland show that the RFA system creates a new landscape mosaic. The consequences in terms of soil quality and productivity are reductions in both;
- the comparisons within RHA and the natural shrubland show that the RHA system creates an integrated landscape mosaic. The consequences in terms of soil quality and productivity in the system are improvements in both;
- the comparisons between the crust area in both natural shrubland showed reduction in aboveground biomass and improvement in the soil quality in the RFA, and the opposite trend in RHA. The differences in the crusted patches of the shrubland may derive from the changes in the rainfall gradient and development of the soil biological crust;
- the comparisons between the RFA and the RHA types exemplify systems that transformed the natural shrubland in to forest (RFA) and system that integrated with the natural shrubland (RHA). The RFA system transforms the natural soil source-sink system into a sink system, while RHA preserves the source-sink system.
It is concluded that an integrated system provides a higher bundle of ecosystem services and function. We suggest preserving the key principle of dry-land ecosystems which is redistribution of rainfall to runoff in order to create water-enriched patches."
ExpeER TNA accepted projects
Five projects have been accepted so far:
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GaSMoSAN (Ground and space measurements and modeling of soil albedo) - more
- RFCCRapidEye (Remote Sensing of Forest Canopy Cover in the Negev LTER with RapidEye) -more
- PHENOSENSING (Phenological and primary production studies by remote sensing - more
- DesertScint (Scintillometry under advective conditions in a semi-arid ecosystem) -more
- EVAHYPE (Exploration of relationship between vegetation - soil parameters and hyperspectral data) -more
• How did the Negev site get a large number of visitors?
"The Israeli group was very active in advancing the TA activities in the NEGEV LTER site. We were focused on two target groups. The first was the domestic scientific community that conducts research in the site. We encouraged scientists to invite their colleagues to visit the site. The second was the potential scientific community over Europe that might be interested to run short-term experiments in the site. We distributed the TA brochure along with more detailed description of the site and its uniqueness among scientists of both target groups."
Feedback
Jerzy Cierniewski (Adam Mickiwicz University, Poznan, POLAND) visited the Negev site last august:
"I received logistical and technical assistance for the preparation of the cultivated soil surfaces for the albedo measurements, as well as for the implementation all of the planned measuring experiments. Prof. Arnon Karnieli and the technical staff from the Remote Sensing Laboratory helped me very much in making these measurements. I am very pleased with the stay in the North Negev site." - Read all
Recent publications
Cierniewski, J., Karnieli, A., Kuśnierek, K., Goldberg, A., and Herrmann, I. 2013. Approximating the average daily surface albedo with respect to soil roughness and latitude. International Journal of Remote Sensing. (In press).
Maestre T.F., Quero, L.J., Gotelli, J. N., Escudero, A., Ochoa, V., Delgado-Baquerizo, M., García-Gómez, M., Bowker, A. M., Soliveres, S., Escolar, C., García-Palacios, P., Berdugo, M., Valencia, E., Gozalo, B., Gallardo, A., Blones, J., Boeken, B., Bran, D., Conceição, A.A., Cabrera, O., Chaieb, M., Derak, M., Eldridge, J. D., Espinosa, I. C., Florentino, A., Gaitán, J., Gatica, M.G., Ghiloufi, W., Gómez-González, S., Gutiérrez, R.J., Hernández, M. R., Huang, X., Huber-Sannwald, E., Jankju, M., Miriti, M., Monerris, J., Mau, L.R., Morici, E., Naseri, K., Ospina, A., Polo, V., Prina, A., Pucheta, E., Ramírez-Collantes, A. D., Romão, R., Tighe, M., Torres-Díaz, C., Val, J., Veiga, P. J., Wang, D., Zaady, E. 2012. Plant Species Richness and Ecosystem Multifunctionality in Global Drylands. Science 335: 214-218.
Sher, Y., Zaady, E., Ronen, Z., Nejidat, A. 2012. Nitrate accumulation in soils of a semi-arid ecosystem following a drought-induced shrub death. European Journal of Soil Biology 53: 86-93.
Zaady, E., Arbel, S., Barkai, D., Sarig, S. 2012. Long-term impact of agricultural practices on biological soil crusts and their hydrological processes in a semiarid landscape. Journal of Arid Environments. In Press.
Ozdemir, I and Karnieli, A. 2011. Predicting forest structural parameters using the image texture derived from WorldView-2 multispectral imagery in a dryland forest, Israel. International. Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation. 13, 701–710.
Ben-David, E. A., Zaady, E., Sher, Y., Nejidat, A. (2011). Assessment of the spatial distribution of soil microbial communities in patchy arid and semiarid landscapes of the Negev Desert by using combined PLFA and DGGE analyses. FEMS Microbiol Ecol. 76: 492-503.
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