@misc{10481/71927,
year = {2021},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10481/71927},
abstract = {Farmland afforestation has been promoted in recent decades and is one of the main strat‐
egies included in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration to recover degraded areas. However,
the impacts of afforestation on plant diversity and soil quality indicators are still not well‐under‐
stood in semiarid environments. In this study, we assessed the relationships between plant diversity
indicators (abundance, total richness, richness by functional groups, and Shannon diversity) and a
large number of variables in 48 afforestation sites in southeast Spain. We considered associated en‐
vironmental factors, such as geographical, climatic or edaphic variables, age, and land‐use history.
We compared plant diversity and soil properties following land‐use change from cereal cropping
to afforestation, which is one of the most common land‐use changes in Mediterranean areas. Plant
diversity in afforested sites was found to be dependent on previous land use, the proximity of nat‐
ural vegetation, several soil properties (texture, pH, and total nitrogen), and plantation age. Affor‐
ested soils showed higher plant diversity and an improvement in edaphic parameters related to
multifunctionality in semiarid ecosystems (i.e., soil organic carbon, nitrogen, and potassium) than
arable cropped soils.},
organization = {INIA, grant number RTA2005‐00009‐C02‐01},
publisher = {MDPI},
keywords = {Active restoration},
keywords = {Functional groups},
keywords = {Plant richness},
keywords = {Soil properties},
keywords = {Land use changes},
keywords = {Mediterranean region},
keywords = {UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration},
title = {Effects of Afforestation on Plant Diversity and Soil Quality in Semiarid SE Spain},
doi = {10.3390/f12121730},
author = {Segura, Carmen and Jiménez Morales, María Noelia and Fernández Ondoño, Emilia and Navarro, Francisco Bruno},
}