Alados, Concepción L.

Biography

Mountain pastures represents one of the most important natural resource in the world and, it is one of the most important land uses influencing landscape formation. In Spanish society, mountain pastures play an important socio-economical role in the maintenance of rural life and it is also in the background of our cultural heritage. However, important and drastic changes taking place in our society are leading to pastures mismanagement and consequent land degradation.

Research Interest

The conservation of mountain ecosystems must be based on the capacity of the ecosystem to self-organize and to maintain its function and organization after regular disturbances. Our purpose is to understand the mechanisms underlying the livestock-plant-soil feedback and determine the importance of plant-soil interaction in the productivity and sustainability of mountain pastures along a rainfall gradient from semiarid to subalpine pastures. Pilot study areas are ranging from the high alpine grasslands to the dense matorral, low discontinuous matorral and semi-arid steppes. Specific objectives: 1.- Identify positive and negative feedback processes operating in pastures ecosystem that determine the productivity and conservation of those fragile, complex and unstable ecosystems that depend on the interactions among plant and soil mediated by pastoral management. 2.- Most relevant plant-soil feedback includes plant-hydro-physical properties, plant-microbes-nutrients and plant-soil seed bank. Our aim is to determine the role of grazing on the productivity-microorganisms-nutrients interactions along a gradient of precipitation. 3.- To assess the optimal management strategy to ensures pastures preservation by developing monitoring tools and management practices to prevent pastures degradation due to either, the expansion of woody species or the loss of grassland quality, either by the increase in coarsening, or by the loss of biomass and productivity.