Prof. Penuelas had been on tour during May visiting India and Nepal to stablish new projects and research lines on phosphorus limitation and climate change impacts in these locations.

In India he visited several research centers to conduct meetings with local scientis from:

• National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR). Scientists discussed about the limited stock of this vital macronutrient in nature and its Increasing limitation in an increasingly fertilized world with N and C.
  • Principal investigators
    • Dr. Ayay Parida. Director of the Institute of Life Sciences
    • Dr. Ramesh V. Sonti. Director of the National Institute of Plant Genome Research
    • Dr. Jitender Giri.
    • Dr. Raman Meenakshi Sundaram. PhD. Fellow-NAAS, ISGPB and IUSSTF
    • Dr. Jitendra Thakur.
    • Dr. Amar Pal Singh.
    • Dr. Ananda Sarkar
  • Postdoc researchers
  • PhD students
  • Technicians

• Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee
  • Dr. Harsh Chauhan
  • Dr. Jitender Giri from the National Institute of Plant Genome Research

• Jawaharlal Nehru University. School of Environmental Sciences. Scientists discussed about antibiotic resistance and air pollution.
  • Postdoc researchers
  • PhD students
  • Technicians

During the stay Prof Penuelas held seminars and conferences in the research centers listed above.

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During his visit to Nepal he conducted meetings and fiels trips on research on treeline shifts, nutrients and emergent pollutants in response to global warming and global eutophication and pollution in the Himalayas of Nepal.

This research involved scientists from:

•  Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) – Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research:
  • Prof. Eryuan Liang
  • Dr. Shalik Ram Sigdel
  • Dr.  Haifeng Zhu

• Nanjing Forestry University – College of Biology and the Environment:
  • Dr. Yafeng Wang

• Tribhuvan University, Nepal
  • Prof. Binod Dawadi (Central Department of Hydrology and Meteorology)
  • Prof. Ram Kailash Prasad Yadav (Central Department of Botany)
  • Dr. Chitra Bahadur Baniya  (Central Department of Botany)

During the stay Prof Penuelas held seminars and conferences and visit selected treeline plots across the central Himalayas in Nepal.

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Evolution of the landscape-use efficiencies (LUE) of Pyrenean chamois and seasonal livestock along different scenarios of woody plant expansion. Slopes of the linear regression are also reported for each species. Figure: Espunyes et al, 2019.

Climatic and land‐use changes are leading to shrub expansion in alpine grasslands. In this work, we address whether wild and domestic herbivores under varying conditions of resource availability will be able to use efficiently their foraging landscape.

In a new study plublished in the journal Global Change Biology authors found that “shrubification” affects herbivores differently depending on their feeding preferences and plasticity. Mixed feeders will manage better in fallow landscapes but free‐ranging livestock will be less efficient, highlighting a growing economic risk for mountain livestock farmers worldwide.

Reference: Johan Espunyes, Miguel Lurgi, Ulf Büntgen, Jordi Bartolomé, Juan Antonio Calleja, Arturo Gálvez‐Cerón, Josep Peñuelas, Bernat Claramunt-López, Emmanuel Serrano. 2019. Different effects of alpine woody plant expansion on domestic and wild ungulates. Global Change Biology (2019), 808-1819 | First Published: 08 February 2019

Every living creature on Earth is made of atoms of the various bioelements (elements used by living organisms) that are harnessed in the construction of molecules, tissues, organisms and communities, as we know them. The most common bioelements are: hydrogen (H) 59%, oxygen (O) 24%, carbon (C) 11%, nitrogen (N) 4%, phosphorus (P) 1% and sulfur (S) 0.1-1% (percentages of total number of atoms in organisms), but there are other bioelements, normally present in low concentrations such as potassium (K), magnesium (Mg), iron (Fe), calcium (Ca), molybdenum (Mo), manganese (Mn) and zinc (Zn). Organisms need these bioelements in specific quantities and proportions to survive and grow.

Distinct species have different functions and life strategies, and have therefore developed distinct structures and adopted a certain combination of metabolic and physiological processes. Each species is thus also expected to have different requirements for each bioelement andbe characterized by an specific bio-elemental composition.

In a new study published in the journal Ecology authors propose that a “biogeochemical niche” can be associated with the classical ecological niche of each species. Authors show from field data examples that a biogeochemical niche is characterized by a particular elementome defined as the content of all (or at least most) bioelements. “The differences in elementome among species are a function of taxonomy and phylogenetic distance, sympatry (the bioelemental compositions should differ more among coexisting than among non-coexisting species to avoid competitive pressure), and homeostasis with a continuum between high homeostasis/low plasticity and low homeostasis/high plasticity”, explains Prof. Josep Penuelas from CREAF-CSIC Barcelona.

The biogeochemical niche hypothesis proposed in this paper has the advantage relative to other associated theoretical niche hypotheses that it can be easily characterized by actual quantification of a measurable trait: the elementome of a given organism or a community, being potentially applicable across taxa and habitats. The changes in bioelemental availability can determine genotypic selection and therefore have a feedback on ecosystem function and organization.

“Further studies are warranted to discern the ecological and evolutionary processes involved in the biogeochemical niche of all types of individuals, taxa and ecosystems. The changes of bioelements availability and use at long timescales should determine phenotypic selection and therefore also ecosystem function and organization, and, at the end, the evolution of life and the environment”, says Prof. Jordi Sardans from CREAF-CSIC.

Reference: Peñuelas, J., Fernández-Martínez, M., Ciais, P., Jou, D., Piao, S., Obersteiner, M., Vicca, S., Janssens, I.A., Sardans, J. 2019. The bioelements, the elementome and the “biogeochemical niche”. Ecology 2019. DOI: 10.1002/ecy.2652

URL: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecy.2652

Promising kick off meeting of the Ecometabolomics project at Ecological and Forestry Applications Research Centre (CREAF),  Bellaterra, Catalonia (March 18-19, 2019).

The Ecometabolomics project deals with the global linkages between plant metabolism, functioning and life history and includes participants from ETH Zürich, Université de Genève, Universität Wien, Université de Toulouse, University of Manchester, Oxford University and CSIC-CREAF.

Great kick off meeting of the FutureArtic project in Sitges. Interesting presentations that guarantee a promising development of this project.

The main aims of the Sitges workshop were to:

• Create a platform to get an in depth overview on the past and ongoing research activities within ForHot (the previous experiment at the site).
• Have an official kick-off meeting for the FutureArctic ITN project.

Climate change will affect arctic and subarctic ecosystems more than other ecosystems worldwide, with temperature increases expected up to 4-6°C. Overarching and basic questions remain unanswered, partially due to limited access of these remote areas and technological limitations: How much carbon will escape from the Arctic under a future climate? How do the multitude of ecosystem processes, driven by plant growth, microbial activities and soil characteristics, interact to determine soil carbon storage capacity?. The H2020 ITN ‘FutureArctic’ aims to pave the way for generalized permanently connected data acquisition systems for key environmental variables and processes.

For more information consult the website FutureArtic

Excellent working sessions at the 7^th ForHot annual meeting in Sitges. Interesting and valuable presentations that will enable to advance in the study of how various ecosystem processes are affected by temperature.

The ForHot project is based on the study of a natural soil warming generated by the earth-quake that shocked S-Iceland in May 2008.

On May 29, 2008, there was an earthquake in S-Iceland that measured 6.3 on the Richter scale. One of its many implications was that geothermal systems close to its epicentre were disturbed. At Reykir, one of the campuses of the Agricultural University of Iceland, one such geothermal system moved from its previous location, to a new and previously “cold” area. The new belowground geothermal channels (in the bedrock) resulted in soil temperature to increase in the new area that is ca. 4 ha in size.

For more information consult the website ForHot

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Plant morphology traits, as the size of individual plants, has high functional importance. In a new study in the journal New Phytologist authors analyse the ability of 80 species of European trees species to modify its architecture in response to changes in the environment. Figure: Pixabay

Plant morphology has been described as an equilibrium between constraints to plant growth and exogenous environmental stressors. Intraspecific variability in ecological traits confers the ability of a species to adapt to an ever-changing environment.

Fractions of biomass allocation in plants (BAFs) defined as the ratio of plant biomass of organs (the stem, branches, leaves and roots) to total plant biomass, and represent both ecological traits and direct expressions of investment strategies and so have important implications on plant fitness, particularly under current global change.

In a new study in the journal New Phytologist authors combined data on BAFs of trees in > 10 000 forest plots with their distributions in Europe. The study aimed to test whether plant species with wider distributions have more or less variable intraspecific variance of the BAFs foliage–woody biomass and shoot–root ratios than species with limited distribution.

Authors show that a combination of 36% tree genetic diversity and 64% environmental variability explains variance in BAFs and implies that changes in genetic diversity occur quickly. “Genetic diversity should thus play a key role in regulating species responses to future climate change. Loss of habitat, even if transient, could induce a loss of genetic diversity and hinder species survival”, explains Dr. Stavros D. Veresoglou from the Institut fur Biologie, Plant Ecology, Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany and the Faculty of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

In summary, the study indicates that BAFs were more variable in trees with extensive distributions. Most notably, authors made the point that it was a higher genetic variability that resulted in more variable BAFs for tree species with extensive distributions. “We thus present evidence that the loss of habitat for tree species through rapid loss of genetic diversity could lower the ability of the species to modify its architecture (BAFs) in response to changes in the environment. It is thus likely that any loss of habitat may not be as reversible as many believe”, says Prof. Josep Peñuelas from CREAF-CSIC.

Reference: Veresoglou, S.D., Peñuelas, J. 2019. Variance in biomass-allocation fractions is explained by distribution in European trees. New Phytologist, doi: 10.1111/nph.15686.

Life on Earth is the result of evolutionary processes acting on a continuous accumulation of structural and functional information by combination and innovation in the use of matter and endo- (inside the organism) and exosomatic (outside the organism) energy and on discontinuous processes of death and destruction that recycle the materials that form structure, information and energy compounds, such as proteins, DNA and ATP, respectively.

In a new study in the journal Ecological complexity authors define five life laws for these vital processes. These processes cannot exceed natural limits of size and rates because they are constrained by space, matter and energy; biology builds on what is possible within these physicochemical limits

“Learning from the way nature deals with the accumulation of information, the limits of size and the rates at which life can acquire and expend energy and resources for maintenance, growth and competition will help us to model and manage our environmental future and sustainability”, explains Prof. Dennis Baldocchi from University of California, Berkeley.

According to this study, the five most prominent laws pertinent to life and ecology are:

1. The law of mass conservation (introduced by Lomonosov and Lavoisier)
2. The first law of thermodynamics: energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system
3. The second law of thermodynamics, the entropy of any isolated system always increases
4. Information content is a power of the size of the material store with an exponent larger than one
5. Basic mechanisms such as natural selection, self-organization and random processes drive evolution, generating the huge complexity of organisms and ecosystems.

“Life has adapted to these ecological laws and physical limits for billions of years, and if we humans want to develop a sustainable world, we would do well to not forget them in our use of space, matter and energy. In the end, we are only another biological species among millions on Earth and are living in a very short period of Earth’s history. We should listen and learn lessons from nature that has had several billion years to evolve and get it as right as possible”, says Prof. Josep Peñuelas from CREAF-CSIC.

Reference: Peñuelas, J., Baldocchi, D. 2019. Life and the five biological laws. Lessons for global change models and sustainability. Ecological Complexity

Premis Ciutat de Barcelona 2018 had been marked with a ceremony held on 14 February 2019, at the  Saló de Cent, Barcelona City Hall, and presided by the mayor Ada Colau.

The jury formed by Isabel Cacho (president), Xavier Rodó, Francisco J. Doblas, Jaume Terradas and Frederic Bartomeus have awarded Marcos Fernández-Martínez, Jordi Sardans and Josep Peñuelas for their work “Global trends in carbon sinks and their relationships with CO2 and temperature” publicated in the Nature Climate Change journal.