Background
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).
Goals
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Track how rainfall pulses translate into soil moisture and water reserves.
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Quantify plant and soil responses: productivity, microbial activity, and nutrient cycling.
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Assess how moisture patterns shape plant, microbial, and soil-fauna diversity.
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Evaluate the effects of land use (grazing, forest thinning, terraces).
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Predict ecosystem resilience under climate change.
Approach
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.
Significance
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.
Collaborators
Project Team
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).