Research Bio
Dr. Laureano Gherardi is a global ecosystem ecologist who investigates how terrestrial ecosystems, particularly grasslands and drylands, respond to the interacting pressures of global environmental change. His research combines multi-site manipulative field experiments and large-scale ecological data synthesis to uncover the mechanisms governing ecosystem function, stability, and carbon cycling.
A central theme of Dr. Gherardi's research is the profound and often asymmetric impact of climate variability. His work has been pivotal in demonstrating that increased interannual precipitation variability—not just changes in mean rainfall—is a key driver of woody encroachment in drylands, showing that enhanced variability can decrease grass productivity while simultaneously promoting shrubs. He has also led major global syntheses quantifying how extreme drought impacts have been systematically underestimated in grasslands and how drought intensity and duration interact to magnify productivity losses.
Dr. Gherardi's research also focuses on the "hidden" belowground processes that regulate ecosystem responses. His group's work provided the first global, data-driven estimates of belowground net carbon fixation and its climatic controls. This belowground focus has also revealed how drought fundamentally alters soil food webs by suppressing predators and promoting root herbivores, and how rain-induced soil carbon emissions from drylands are far larger than previously estimated.
Finally, his work bridges climate, nutrients, and land use. Dr. Gherardi is a key contributor to global synthesis efforts (e.g., NutNet) that have untangled how nutrient enrichment (N & P) governs the global biomass-precipitation relationship, increases grassland sensitivity to drought, and impacts key functional groups like legumes. His research also integrates the effects of grazing, contributing to a framework for understanding how grazing impacts ecosystem service delivery across the world's drylands.
Research Expertise and Interest
ecosystem ecology, plant ecology, belowground productivity, soil carbon