Current Projects
WASTE4DROUGHT (Organic waste to face drought in Mediterranean agricultural systems: effects and fate of exogenous C inputs to soil)
According to climate predictions, rainfed Mediterranean agricultural soils will be increasingly subjected to conditions of greater water stress that will most likely have a negative impact on the biodiversity of these soils and on the provision of their ecosystem services. Agriculture is one of the main productive sectors in Spain and its high dependence on climatic conditions places it in a situation of great vulnerability in the current context of climate change. Given these perspectives, it is urgent to address measures to adapt the sector to these changes. For that, there is a need to investigate the influence of agronomic practices on soil properties and the response of crops to these disturbances. Agricultural techniques aimed at increasing organic matter content and / or the stability of soil aggregates, such as the application of exogenous organic matter and the implementation of conservation tillage, could be very relevant to reduce the vulnerability of the agroecosystems under low rainfall scenarios. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out studies in real field conditions to evaluate the response of the crops to these soil management techniques, to analyze the potential risk of the application of exogenous organic matter (compost) and to evaluate, therefore, its real applicability to increase the resistance of soils to drought. The specific objective of this project is to evaluate the role that soil organic matter plays in the resistance of agricultural soils to drought, using field experiments in two Spanish locations in the center and south of the Iberian Peninsula. These field experiments are designed to evaluate the short- and long- term effects of the application of organic composts from urban wastes. In one of the sites the effects of conservation tillage will be also studied. The ultimate goal is to elucidate whether these sustainable soil management techniques (conservation tillage and reuse of organic waste as amendment) have the potential to mitigate the effect of the probable reduction of rainfall on the functioning of the soils in rainfed conditions.
The project is led by University of Sevilla (US) and IRNAS-CSIC, with collaborations with ICA-CSIC (Juan Carlos García-Gil, Marco Panettieri), and founded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2021-122628OB-I00)
​
Team Members (US): María T. Domínguez, Elena Fernández Boy, Laura Morales Salmerón; IRNAS-CSIC: Engracia Madejón, Paula Madejón, Laura Lozano; ICA-CSIC: Juan Carlos García Gil, Marco Panettieri
DEGRAMED (Degradation and vulnerability of Mediterranean soils to drought: role of the soil microbial community)
I currently lead the DEGRAMED project (Degradation and vulnerability of Mediterranean soils to drought: role of the soil microbial community) founded by the National Science Program (CGL2017-85891-R). The general aim of this project is analyzing the consequences of different soil degradation threats (trace element contamination, and losses of organic matter due to post-fire erosion and intensive agricultural use) for the stability (resistance and resilience) of these soils against drought. The main hypothesis that these soil degradation threats would result in soil biodiversity losses, and that these losses alone (apart from the effects of degradation factors on soil physico-chemical properties) would result in decreased stability of main soil functions against drought. One of the working hypotheses is that it is possible to increase the stability of degraded agricultural soils to drought by the addition of organic amendments, and that the effect of this measure on soil stability is at least partially mediated by changes in the structure of soil microbial communities. To test these hypotheses the project combines a descriptive approach (by exploring the diversity-multifunctionality and diversity-stability relationships in a range of European degraded and remediated soils) with an experimental approach (by manipulating soil microbial communities to test their specific role in the stability of soil function against drought), based in a set of soil remediation experiments from the European RECARE network.
​
The project is led by University of Sevilla (US), with collaborations with Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (Dr. Héctor Conesa) and Universidade de Aveiro (Dr. Jan Jakob Keizer)
​
Team Members (US): María T. Domínguez, Elena Fernández Boy, Laura Morales Salmerón, Belén Herrador Esquinas
LABORSEQ (Vulnerabilidad de sistemas agrícolas a la sequía bajo distintos tipos de laboreo: efectos en la comunidad microbiana del suelo) Vulnerability of agricultural systems to drought under different tillage management
Agriculture is one of the main economic sectors in the Andalusian region, with a potentially high vulnerability to the current climate change projections. Different types of soil management can have profound effects on the capacity of soils to store water, thus influencing the water balance in agricultural systems. This project aims to evaluate whether conservation tillage (no tillage and reduced tillage) can enhance the resistance of rainfed agriculture to drought. We are specially interested in determining the role of the microbial community in the resistance/resilience of Mediterranean agricultural soils to drought, and to evaluate how these communities can be affected by different tillage systems. We are developing a field drought experiment to simulate the rainfall conditions expected for the Guadalquivir Valley for the end of the century (a 30 % of annual rainfall reduction). This experiment is based on a long-term tillage experiment conducted by the Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología de Sevilla since 2008 that compares different tillage systems (traditional tillage, reduced tillage and no tillage). In this experiment we are monitoring changes in soil C stocks and fluxes, as well as in the soil microbial communities in response to tillage type and water inputs.
​
The project is led by University of Sevilla (US) in colaboration with Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiologia (IRNAS-CSIC) from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), and founded by the FEDER Operative Programme from the Junta de Andalucía.
​
Team Members (US): María T. Domínguez, Elena Fernández Boy, Laura Morales Salmerón; IRNAS-CSIC: Paula Madejón Engracia Madejón
