Eli Zaady

TL;DR: A global empirical study relating plant species richness and abiotic factors to multifunctionality in drylands, which collectively cover 41% of Earth’s land surface and support over 38% of the human population, suggests that the preservation of plant biodiversity is crucial to buffer negative effects of climate change and desertification in dryland.

TL;DR: Any predicted increase in aridity with climate change will probably reduce the concentrations of N and C in global drylands, but increase that of P, suggesting the provision of key services provided by these ecosystems could be negatively affected.

TL;DR: Fernando T. Maestre,* Jose L. Quero, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Adrian Escudero, Victoria Ochoa, Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, Miguel Garcia-Gomez, Matthew A. Eldridge, Carlos I. Espinosa, Adriana Florentino, Juan Gaitan, M. Gabriel Gatica, Wahida Ghiloufi, Susana Gomez-Gonzalez, Julio R. Gutierrez, Rosa M. Veiga, Deli Wang, Eli Zaady

TL;DR: It is suggested that changes in aridity, such as those predicted by climate-change models, may reduce microbial abundance and diversity, a response that will likely impact the provision of key ecosystem services by global drylands.

TL;DR: In this article, the role of soil crusts in infiltration processes in three contrasting environments in the Northern, Central, and Central-Western Negev, Israel was examined, and it was shown that removal of a thin cyanobacterial-dominant crust from a sandy dune at Nizzana in the Central-western Negesv and of a well-developed lichendominant and a cyanobacteriadominant soil from a loess-covered hillslope at Sayeret Shaked in the northern Negesa resulted in three to fivefold increases in sorpt