TY - GEN A1 - Veste, Maik A1 - Herppich, Werner B. T1 - Comparative ecophysiology of the leaf-succulents Augea capensis (C3) and Malephora purpureo-crocea (CAM) in the Knersvlakte, Succulent Karoo, South Africa T2 - Flora N2 - The generally accepted assumption that CAM is an important adaptation to the drought conditions in arid deserts is mainly based on studies in controlled environments comparing the respective photosynthetic pathways in plants of different morphology. Comparative long-term field studies on the ecophysiology of C3- and CAM succulents co-occurring in the same desert habitat are too rare to satisfactorily answer the old question whether the metabolic pathway or the succulence is more important to guarantee survival in such a harsh habitat. Thus, relevant ecophysiological parameters were repeatedly monitored on plants of the leaf succulents Augea capensis (C3) and Malephora purpureo-crocea (CAM), which commonly dominate a habitat in the Knersvlakte, Namaqualand, South Africa. Under identical conditions in the same habitat, carbon gain of the C3 species was higher than that of the CAM plant, but their WUE lower and maximum photosynthetic activity nearly the same. In M. purpureo-crocea, irrigation induced rapid whole day stomatal opening at drastically increased daytime but decreased night-time CO2-uptake, while respective responses of the C3 species were delayed. These different response dynamics were due to different rooting depth, root morphology and water acquisition strategy of the flat rooting CAM and the deep-rooting C3 species. This, however, may not explain the highly similar growth success. Anyway, the results verify that CAM provides no advantage over C3 for long-term survival in the same desert environment in morphologically similar succulents. KW - Mode of photosynthesis Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.flora.2021.151807 SN - 1618-0585 SN - 0367-2530 VL - 278 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Kidron, Giora J. A1 - Veste, Maik A1 - Lichner, Lubomir T1 - Biological factors impacting hydrological processes: Pecularities of plants and biological soil crusts T2 - Journal of Hydrology and Hydromechanics N2 - The effects of biological factors on the water cycle and subsequently on hydrological processes have wide and profound consequences on ecosystem structure, function and management. A profound understanding of their effects is of prime importance especially in light of climate change projection KW - Biological soil crusts Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.2478/johh-2021-0031 SN - 1338-4333 VL - 69 IS - 4 SP - 357 EP - 359 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Veste, Maik A1 - Grey, Kerry-Anne A1 - Gottschalk, Nadine A1 - Trachte, Katja A1 - Midgley, Guy F. T1 - Can shelterbelt trees reduce evapotranspiration and ecophysiological stress in irrigated vineyards and citrus orchards? A transcontinental experiment in the Western Cape, South Africa and Lower Lusatia, Germany T2 - Landscape 2021 - Diversity for Sustainable and Resilient Agriculture N2 - In the context of ongoing climate change and increasing population, there is an urgent need to optimize the water consumption of surface and groundwater in agricultural production. In recent years, intensive irrigated viticulture and horticulture have faced increasing demand pressure in many water-limited areas including the Western Cape Province in South Africa. Shelterbelts of trees are often used to reduce wind speed and water demands as an eco-engineering measure directly influencing soil evaporation and crop transpiration. Objectives are (i) to evaluate the extent of impacts of wind speed from shelterbelts at canopy level in citrus orchards and vineyards (ii) to assess the wind effects at leaf level including leaf temperature and related ecophysiological performance in irrigated vineyards. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.34333.03043 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Rieser, Jakob A1 - Veste, Maik A1 - Thiel, Michael A1 - Schönbrodt-Stitt, Sarah T1 - Coverage and Rainfall Response of Biological Soil Crusts Using Multi-Temporal Sentinel-2 Data in a Central European Temperate Dry Acid Grassland T2 - Remote Sensing N2 - Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are thin microbiological vegetation layers that naturally develop in unfavorable higher plant conditions (i.e., low precipitation rates and high temperatures) in global drylands. They consist of poikilohydric organisms capable of adjusting their metabolic activities depending on the water availability. However, they, and with them, their ecosystem functions, are endangered by climate change and land-use intensification. Remote sensing (RS)-based studies estimated the BSC cover in global drylands through various multispectral indices, and few of them correlated the BSCs’ activity response to rainfall. However, the allocation of BSCs is not limited to drylands only as there are areas beyond where smaller patches have developed under intense human impact and frequent disturbance. Yet, those areas were not addressed in RS-based studies, raising the question of whether the methods developed in extensive drylands can be transferred easily. Our temperate climate study area, the ‘Lieberoser Heide’ in northeastern Germany, is home to the country’s largest BSC-covered area. We applied a Random Forest (RF) classification model incorporating multispectral Sentinel-2 (S2) data, indices derived from them, and topographic information to spatiotemporally map the BSC cover for the first time in Central Europe. We further monitored the BSC response to rainfall events over a period of around five years (June 2015 to end of December 2020). Therefore, we combined datasets of gridded NDVI as a measure of photosynthetic activity with daily precipitation data and conducted a change detection analysis. With an overall accuracy of 98.9%, our classification proved satisfactory. Detected changes in BSC activity between dry and wet conditions were found to be significant. Our study emphasizes a high transferability of established methods from extensive drylands to BSC-covered areas in the temperate climate. Therefore, we consider our study to provide essential impulses so that RS-based biocrust mapping in the future will be applied beyond the global drylands KW - Biological soil crusts Y1 - 2021 SN - 2072-4292 VL - 13 IS - 16 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Veste, Maik A1 - Felde, Vincent John Martin Noah Linus A1 - Warren, Steven D. A1 - Pietrasiak, Nicole T1 - Editorial: Ecological Development and Functioning of Biological Soil Crusts After Natural and Human Disturbances T2 - Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution N2 - In recent years, the importance of soil health for ecosystem functions has come further into the scientific focus (Lehmann et al., 2020). Especially after severe ecosystem disturbances, soil formation has to start anew. Such disturbances, which reset ecosystem development to the starting point, can be of natural (volcanoes, mobile sand dunes, floods, glaciers) (La Farge et al., 2013; Lan et al., 2014) or human origin (post-mining landscapes, military training areas, agricultural lands) (Belnap et al., 2007; Schaaf et al., 2011). In these young ecosystems, the interactions between the initial colonizers, the inorganic matter, and the subsequent biogeochemical processes are an important prerequisite for the development of elemental fluxes, soil genesis, and thus for further ecosystem development. Y1 - 2021 UR - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.713584/full U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.713584 SN - 2296-701X VL - 9 ER -