Climate change is predicted to increase the aridity in the Mediterranean Basin and severely affect forest productivity and composition. The responses of forests to different timescales of drought, however, are still poorly understood because extreme and persistent moderate droughts can produce nonlinear responses in plants. We conducted a rainfall-manipulation experiment in a Mediterranean fore...

The mycorrhizal colonisation of plants grown in unmanaged soils from two restoration sites with a fire history in Northern Portugal was evaluated from the perspective of supporting restoration programmes. To promote restoration of original tree stands, Quercus ilex L. and Pinus pinaster Ait. were used as target species on two sites, denoted Site 1 and 2 respectively. The aim of the study was to...

We will demonstrate the ILEX system, a system which dynamically generates descriptions of database objects for the web, adapting the description to the discourse context and user type. Among other improvements in version 3, the system now generates from relational databases, and this demonstration will focus on this ability. We will also show how incremental extensions to the domain semantics i...

Stored non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) have been proposed as a key determinant of drought resistance in plants. However, the evidence for this role is controversial, as it comes mostly from observational, short-term studies. Here, we take advantage of a long-term experimental throughfall reduction to elucidate the response of NSC to increased drought 14 years after the beginning of the treat...

Yerba mate (YM) is massively produced and consumed as an infusion in South America and is gaining popularity all over the world. This product is obtained from the dried leaves of Ilex paraguariensis Saint Hilaire, mixed with fragments of its dried branches. For its commercialization YM must have a minimum percentage of leaves according to a standard classification. Until now, composition quanti...

The effects of nitrogen (N) deposition, tropospheric ozone (O3) and their interaction were investigated in two Mediterranean tree species, Fraxinus ornus L. (deciduous) and Quercus ilex L. (evergreen), having different leaf habits and resource use strategies. An experiment was conducted under controlled condition to analyse how nitrogen deposition affects the ecophysiological and biochemical tr...

We tested whether growth and maintenance costs of plant organs vary with environmental stress. Quercus ilex L. seedlings from acorns collected from natural populations in the northern Iberian Peninsula and in a lower elevation and putatively less stressful habitat in the southern Iberian Peninsula were grown in pots under the same conditions. Growth and maintenance respiration were measured by ...

L.J. De Kok et al. (eds.), Sulfur Metabolism in Plants, Proceedings of the International Plant Sulfur Workshop 1, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4450-9_29, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012 Abstract The effect of long-term exposure to elevated p CO 2 concentrations on sulfate and nitrate assimilation was studied under fi eld conditions using leaves from Quercus ilex and Quercus pubescens...