Israel’s drylands—from Mediterranean woodlands to hyper-arid deserts—are driven by short rainfall pulses that shape soil moisture, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning. This project develops a unified framework to understand how water pulses, biodiversity, and ecosystem processes interact across eight LTER sites differing in climate, land use, and ecosystem type (rain-, runoff-, and flood-driven).
Track how rainfall pulses translate into soil moisture and water reserves.
Quantify plant and soil responses: productivity, microbial activity, and nutrient cycling.
Assess how moisture patterns shape plant, microbial, and soil-fauna diversity.
Evaluate the effects of land use (grazing, forest thinning, terraces).
Predict ecosystem resilience under climate change.
The project combines field measurements, remote sensing, and ecosystem modeling to link water availability, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning across spatial scales and land-use types.
This work provides the first integrated, national-scale understanding of pulse-driven dryland dynamics in Israel. Results will guide climate-adapted management, restoration, and sustainable land-use planning in drylands locally and globally.
Efrat Sheffer – PI, Plant ecology, modeling (Hebrew University), Tarin Paz-Kagan – Remote sensing, eco-informatics (Ben-Gurion University), Eli Argaman – Soil erosion & ecohydrology; PI Shagririm LTER (ARO), Yair Mau – Ecohydrology & soil-plant-water modeling (Hebrew University), Tamir Klein – Plant productivity; PI Yatir LTER (Weizmann Institute), José Grünzweig – Biogeochemistry & ecosystem productivity (Hebrew University), Niv De-Malach – Plant biodiversity & modeling (Hebrew University), David Zeevy – Microbiome diversity (Weizmann Institute), Elli Groner – Soil fauna; PI Ramon LTER (Dead Sea & Arava Science Center), Hezi Yizhaq – Modeling; PI Shaked LTER (Ben-Gurion University).