Wahida Ghiloufi

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: 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: The results suggest that those sites annually receiving ~ 178 mm of rainfall will be especially sensitive to future climate changes, and may help to define appropriate conservation strategies for mitigating effects of climate change on dryland vegetation.

TL;DR: In this global-scale study on drylands, plant-plant interactions were more strongly related to functional traits of the species involved than to the environmental variables considered, so moving to a trait-based facilitation/competition approach help to predict that positive plant- plant interactions are more likely to occur for taller facilitated species in drylands.

TL;DR: Zhang et al. as discussed by the authors studied the effects of soil salinity on soil biogeochemistry (e.g., soil microorganisms, soil organic carbon and greenhouse gas emissions), land desertification, and biodiversity loss.