Biology subjects

Garcia-Palacios, P.

Publications and source records attributed to Garcia-Palacios, P..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Diverse crop rotations off-set yield-scaled nitrogen losses via denitrification

Denitrification, a major source of gaseous nitrogen (N) emissions from agricultural soils, is influenced by management. Practices promoting belowground diversity are suggested to support sustainable agriculture, but their ability to modulate gaseous N-losses via denitrification remains inconclusive. To fill this knowledge gap, we sampled 106 cereal fields spanning a 3,000 km North-South gradient across Europe and compiled 56 associated climatic, soil, microbial and management variables. We found that increased denitrification was associated with higher proportion of time with crop cover over the last ten years. Denitrification rates were best predicted by microbial biomass and microbial functional guilds involved in N cycling, in particular denitrification. We also show that several diversification practices affect the variation in denitrification predictors, suggesting a trade-off between agricultural diversification and gaseous N-losses via denitrification. However, increased crop diversity in rotations improved yield-scaled denitrification, highlighting the potential of this practice to minimize N losses while contributing to sustainable food production.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2025

Urban crops demonstrate comparable potential for organic carbon storage as natural ecosystems.

Urban greenspaces, encompassing parks, golf courses, roundabouts, and urban crops, have potential to offset urban carbon footprints by storing soil organic carbon (SOC). This study analyzed particulate organic carbon (POC) and mineral-associated organic carbon (MAOC) stocks in topsoil across 27 Iberian cities, comparing urban greenspaces with natural ecosystems under varying climatic and edaphic conditions. Results revealed that urban greenspaces store comparable SOC stocks to natural ecosystems, with MAOC stocks being more dominant and stable across land-use types. POC stocks showed variability, particularly lower in roundabouts and parks compared to natural ecosystems, but remained similar in golf courses and urban crops. SOC fractions correlated inversely with mean annual temperature (MAT), emphasizing the need for cooling strategies in urban areas to preserve stable carbon pools. While MAOC exhibited saturation at higher SOC levels, POC showed a linear increase. This study highlights the importance of tailored management practices to enhance carbon storage in urban soils for climate change mitigation.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2020

Temperature increases soil respiration across ecosystem types and soil development, but soil properties determine the magnitude of this effect

Soil carbon losses to the atmosphere, via soil heterotrophic respiration, are expected to increase in response to global warming, resulting in a positive carbon-climate feedback. Despite the well-known suite of abiotic and biotic factors controlling soil respiration, much less is known about how the magnitude of soil respiration responses to temperature changes over soil development and across contrasting soil properties. Here, we investigated the role of soil development stage and soil properties in driving the responses of soil heterotrophic respiration to increasing temperatures. We incubated soils from eight chronosequences ranging in soil age from hundreds to million years, and encompassing a wide range of vegetation types, climatic conditions, and chronosequences origins, at three assay temperatures (5, 15 and 25{degrees}C). We found a consistent positive effect of assay temperature on soil respiration rates across the eight chronosequences evaluated. However, soil properties such as organic carbon concentration, texture, pH, phosphorus content, and microbial biomass determined the magnitude of temperature effects on soil respiration. Finally, we observed a positive effect of soil development stage on soil respiration that did not alter the magnitude of assay temperature effects. Our work reveals that key soil properties alter the magnitude of the positive effect of temperature on soil respiration found across ecosystem types and soil development stages. This information is essential to better understand the magnitude of the carbon-climate feedback, and thus to establish accurate greenhouse gas emission targets.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2020

Abiotic and biotic drivers underly short- and long-term soil respiration responses to experimental warming in a dryland ecosystem

Soil carbon losses to the atmosphere through soil respiration are expected to rise with ongoing temperature increases, but available evidence from mesic biomes suggests that such response disappears after a few years of experimental warming. However, there is lack of empirical basis for these temporal dynamics in soil respiration responses, and of the mechanisms underlying them, in drylands, which collectively form the largest biome on Earth and store 32% of the global soil organic carbon pool. We coupled data from a ten-year warming experiment in a biocrust-dominated dryland ecosystem with laboratory incubations to confront 0-2 years (short-term hereafter) vs. 8-10 years (long-term hereafter) soil respiration responses to warming. Our results showed that increased soil respiration rates with short-term warming observed in areas with high biocrust cover returned to control levels in the long-term. Warming-induced increases in soil temperature were the main driver of the short-term soil respiration responses, whereas long-term soil respiration responses to warming were primarily driven by thermal acclimation and warming-induced reductions in biocrust cover. Our results highlight the importance of evaluating short and long-term soil respiration responses to warming as a mean to reduce the uncertainty in predicting the soil carbon - climate feedback in drylands.

ecology↗