Weather variations affect natural ecosystems, while in regions where climate change is anticipated to intensify extreme events such as droughts, the vitality of vulnerable species may be reduced. The sensitivity of key-species to the climatic conditi...
The Mediterranean Region currently faces major environmental issues that require constant analysis and monitoring. This study presents a thorough approach based on the application of Landsat imagery from Global Forest Change during 2001–2019. Spatial...
Traditional centennial olive groves represent ecologically valuable agroecosystems that support both biodiversity and cultural heritage across Mediterranean landscapes. On Lesvos Island, Greece, which marks the westernmost limit of the Persian squirr...
Plastic tree shelters are commonly used in plantations under Mediterranean climates to protect against herbivory and enhance outplanting performance. However, effects on outplanting performance cannot be generalized due to the complexity of plant res...
Mediterranean islands have served as important Tertiary and glacial refuges, hosting important peripheral and ecologically marginal forest tree populations. These populations, presumably harboring unique gene complexes, are particularly interesting i...
The Mediterranean basin (MB), a “climate hotspot”, is experiencing faster than average increases in global temperature and water deficit, as well as soil degradation, with detrimental impacts on food crop yield and pest/pathogen incidence...
Climate change leverages landscape transformations and exerts variable pressure on natural environments and rural systems. Earlier studies outlined how Mediterranean Europe has become a global hotspot of climate warming and land use change. The prese...
Monumental olive trees, with their longevity and their remarkable size, represent an important information source for the comprehension of the territory where they grow and the human societies that have kept them through time. Across the centuries, o...
The quantification of climate–growth relationships is a fundamental step in tree-ring sciences. This allows the assessment of functional responses to climate warming, particularly in biodiversity and climate-change hotspots including the Mediterranea...
Background and Objectives—Coexisting tree and shrub species will have to withstand more arid conditions as temperatures keep rising in the Mediterranean Basin. However, we still lack reliable assessments on how climate and drought affect the radial g...
Drought is a major factor limiting tree growth and plant vitality. In the Mediterranean region, the length and intensity of drought stress strongly varies with altitude and site conditions. We used electronic dendrometers to analyze the response of t...
The characterization of 3D vegetation structures is an important topic, which has been addressed by recent research in remote sensing. The forest inventory requires the proper extraction of accurate structural and functional features of individual tr...
Avocado trees (Persea americana Mill.) grown in Mediterranean conditions are exposed to high temperatures and intense solar radiation during summer, factors that can severely compromise plant water status and key physiological processes. To minimize...
Mediterranean ecosystems are threatened by climate change and shrub encroachment. An increase in shrub cover can intensify the competition for water, aggravating the impacts of drought on ecosystem functioning. The effects of shrubs can be positive o...
The emissions of isoprenoids, a kind of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), from soils is not well characterized. We quantified the exchange of isoprenoids between soil with litter and atmosphere along a horizontal gradient from the trunks o...
The global distribution of forest trees is essential for monitoring land-use sustainability. For this reason, FAO developed the Global Forest Survey (GFS), a systematic regional level survey with a homogeneous sampling design. Preliminary results rev...
Background: The implementation of advanced agronomical strategies, including the use of antitranspirant, in order to mitigate the negative effects of environmental stress, particularly heat stress on plants, has become a focal area of research in the...
Invasive non-native trees (INNTs) are increasingly recognized to have negative effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services in protected areas. The management of INNTs is one of the major challenges to preserving native species and ecosystems, to w...
Mediterranean ecosystems face threats from both climate change and shrub invasion. As shrub cover increases, competition for water intensifies, exacerbating the negative effects of drought on ecosystem functioning. However, research into the combined...
Timber assortments are some of the most important goods provided by forests worldwide. To quantify the amount and type of timber assortment is strongly important for socio-economic purposes, but also for accurate assessment of the carbon stored in th...
The olive tree (Olea europaea L.) is an ancient traditional crop in the Mediterranean Basin. In the Mediterranean region, traditional olive orchards are distinguishable by their prevailing climatic conditions. Olive trees are indeed considered one of...
Research Highlights: Tree decline can alter soil carbon cycling, given the close relationship between primary production and the activity of roots and soil microbes. Background and Objectives: We studied how tree decline associated to old age and acc...
Water scarcity in many semi-arid agricultural areas, in particular for the Mediterranean basin, is promoting changes in irrigated agriculture, with alternative strategies being introduced for water-use optimization. The coast of Granada and Malaga (S...
The Eastern inland of Syria has a Mediterranean climate in the north and a tropical desert climate in the south, which results in a dry south and wet north climate feature, especially in winter. The circulation dynamics analysis of 16 winter strong p...
The Mediterranean forests, particularly Cork oak (Quercus suber L., 1927), make a major contribution to the fight against climate change through Carbon sequestration. Hence, there is a great interest in the accurate quantification of biomass and carb...
The availability of images with very high spatial and spectral resolution from airborne sensors or those aboard satellites is opening new possibilities for the analysis of fine-scale vegetation, such as the identification and classification of indivi...
Urban street trees often exhibit distinct architectural characteristics compared to their counterparts in natural forests. Allometric equations for the stem (MS), branches (MB), and total dry aboveground biomass of urban trees (MT) were developed, ba...
This paper is devoted to the assessment of urban greening effects on two important ecosystem services, i.e., air quality and CO2 storage, including the corresponding economic impacts in a real urban area, i.e., a district located in the Mediterranean...
In seasonally dry forests, wildfires can reduce competition for soil water among trees and improve forest resilience to drought. We tested this idea by comparing tree-ring growth patterns of Pinus pinea stands subjected to two prescribed burning inte...
The centennial olive trees of Tunisia serve as enduring symbols of resilience, having withstood the test of time while witnessing the effects of climate change, rising temperatures, water scarcity, and the emergence of new diseases. Presently, there...
Biological invasions are considered among the largest threats to native biodiversity. The Mediterranean Sea, connecting the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic oceans, is characterized as a global marine invasion hotspot, due to a multitude of human pathways a...
Climate change, and specifically global temperature increase, is expected to alter plant phenology. Temperate deciduous fruit trees have cultivar-specific chill and heat requirements to break dormancy and bloom. In this study, we aimed to estimate ch...
Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) technology characterizes standing trees with millimetric precision. An important step to accurately quantify tree volume and above-ground biomass using TLS point clouds is the discrimination between timber and leaf co...
Stem radial variations of Corsican Black pine (Pinus nigra Arnold subsp. laricio Maire) and Maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Aiton) were monitored to quantify the impact of two meteorologically contrasting consecutive years. On the French island of Cors...
Delineating chilling and forcing periods is one of the challenging topics in understanding how temperatures drive the timing of budburst and bloom in fruit tree species. Here, we investigated this question on olive trees, using flowering data collect...
Mediterranean Spotted Fever (MSF) is one of the most common spotted fever Rickettsioses. Most cases of MSF follow a benign course, with a minority of cases being fatal. The severity of the infection depends on bacterial virulence, dose and host facto...
Quercus faginea Lam., a winter-deciduous oak native to the Iberian Peninsula, typically grows under a Mediterranean climate. To identify the main drivers influencing radial wood increment, we analyzed the climatic signals in tree-ring width and wood...
In the Mediterranean basin, coniferous reforestation mainly comprises forest stands highly susceptible to fires. When silvicultural treatments have not been performed for decades after plantation, these stands often exhibit high vertical and horizont...
Climate change is expected to increasingly intensify the water stress that directly impacts crop productivity in the near future. This study integrates the crop water stress index (CWSI) with high-resolution regional climate simulations produced by t...
Fluctuations in climatic conditions during the growing season are recorded in Mediterranean tree-rings and often result in intra-annual density fluctuations (IADFs). Dendroecology and quantitative wood anatomy analyses were used to characterize the r...
Fires affect forest dynamics in seasonally dry regions such as the Mediterranean Basin. There, fire impacts on tree growth have been widely characterized in conifers, particularly pine species, but we lack information on broadleaf tree species that s...
Extreme drought events are becoming increasingly frequent and extended, particularly in Mediterranean drought-prone regions. In this sense, atmospheric oscillations patterns, such as those represented by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index and...
Xylosandrus compactus (Eichhoff), commonly known as the black twig borer, was reported in Sicily (Italy) at the end of 2016, infesting Carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua L.) twigs, large branches, and trunks. Previous research indicated that X. compactus...
Mediterranean wood pastures are the result of traditional silvo-pastoral uses that shaped these ecosystems into a mosaic of trees and open grassland. This ecosystem structure is generally associated with increased soil fertility under tree canopies....
Mediterranean forest ecosystems in Croatia are of very high significance because of the ecological functions they provide. This region is highly sensitive to abiotic stresses such as air pollution, high sunlight, and high temperatures alongside dry p...
This study presents an individual tree-crown-based approach for canopy fuel load estimation and mapping in two Mediterranean pine stands. Based on destructive sampling, an allometric equation was developed for the estimation of crown fuel weight cons...
Plant diversity is a core value of forests and is rapidly becoming a primary management goal under the threat of global environmental changes. Changing conditions, including forestry interventions, or lack of them, may endanger its preservation. Aban...
There is a lack of knowledge on how tree species respond to climatic constraints like water shortages and related atmospheric patterns across broad spatial and temporal scales. These assessments are needed to project which populations will better tol...
Assessing post-fire recovery is essential to forecast how ecosystems will respond to future warmer conditions and higher fire severity. Such assessments must consider site conditions and the post-fire recovery of trees and shrubs. We used tree-ring d...
In recent years, early olive fruit drop has been observed in the northern Mediterranean regions, causing significant economic losses, although the exact cause remains unknown. Recent studies have identified several possible causes; however, our under...
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