Fernando T. Maestre
@ftmaestre.bsky.social
Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering #KAUST Husband, father, dryland ecologist & runner. PI #Maestrelab
Environmental science
40%
Agriculture
29%
Happy to share our new paper from the @erc.europa.eu funded #BIODESERT global survey! Brilliantly led by MSc student Imke Smit, we show that plant facilitation in drylands is driven by a consistent trait match between dominant and target species Out in Global Ecol Biog dx.doi.org/10.1111/geb....
📸 in the first tweet from Zoshua Colah
@unsplash.com
@unsplash.com
And let’s strive to be those reviewers and editors ourselves. A bit of kindness goes a long way—making the whole system better for everyone, but particularly for ECRs.
and genuinely encouraging. It was a reminder that peer review is not just gatekeeping; it’s a collaborative process that often improves our science. So let’s celebrate the many reviewers and editors who invest their time with rigor and kindness
Peer review in top journals is tough, and we often focus on its “dark side”: delays, rejections, and harsh reports. But there’s also a bright side we talk about far too little. Our recent acceptance came with exceptionally kind words from the handling editor—polite, thoughtful, ...
www.mdpi.com
In the paper we discuss actions to transition to a much-needed and more sustainable food production system. Read the paper (#openaccess) for free here: www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/17...
In our new @mdpiopenaccess.bsky.social #Water paper, led by Jaime Martínez-Valderrama, we quantify the hidden & huge cost of food waste in #Spain Between 2014–2018, >480,000 tons of fruits & vegetables were discarded — wasting 36 hm³ of water and emitting >36,000 tCO₂-eq. A crisis that we must stop
The photographs show examples of cyanobacteria-dominated biocrusts in (a) the Al Ula region (Saudi Arabia) and (b) central Saudi Arabia. Photographs by
Corey Nelson
Corey Nelson
Our new review in @universitypress.cambridge.org
Cambridge Prisms: Drylands explores the ecology of biocrusts in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the most extreme and underexplored regions on Earth, their functions, knowledge gaps & potential for land restoration doi.org/10.1017/dry....
Cambridge Prisms: Drylands explores the ecology of biocrusts in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the most extreme and underexplored regions on Earth, their functions, knowledge gaps & potential for land restoration doi.org/10.1017/dry....
A new article in Biological Reviews by Islam et al. synthesizes current knowledge on C cycling and storage in desert ecosystems, highlighting the roles of precipitation patterns, vegetation dynamics & soil inorganic processes in regulating C sequestration onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....