BIODESERT Fertile Island

We examined the fertile island effect by comparing 24 soil physical, chemical and functional attributes beneath the canopy of perennial vegetation compared with their adjacent unvegetated interspaces across global drylands. The 24 attributes were assembled into three synthetic functions that represent the capacity of soils to mineralise organic matter (Decomposition), enhance fertility (Fertility), and conserve water and maintain stability (Conservation, see Methods). We gathered data from 288 dryland sites across 25 countries on six continents (Fig. 1) to test the following two contrasting hypotheses. First, we expected that the magnitude of the fertile island effect would increase with increasing levels of both recent (standardised dung mass) and long-term or historic (heuristic assessment; ungrazed to high) grazing pressure (Hypothesis 1a). This prediction is based on the understanding that greater grazing pressure will destabilise surface soils, mobilising sediment, seed, nutrients, and organic matter from unvegetated interspaces to plant patches, strengthening fertile islands. Additionally, livestock might be expected to have a greater effect than wild herbivores because they have not co-evolved with indigenous vegetation and therefore have more deleterious effects on both island plants and their soils, Hypothesis 1b). Alternatively, changes in climate and plant traits, factors that operate at much larger (regional and global) scales, could overwhelm the impacts of grazing, a factor that operates at the local scale, on fertile islands (Hypothesis 2a). More specifically, irrespective of grazing pressure, we would expect that plants would make a greater contribution to fertile islands in arid and hyper-arid ecosystems where soils are extremely bare and infertile compared with less arid ecosystems where the influence of plants would be relatively lower. For example, reduced rainfall and/or increased temperature would increase the harshness of the interspaces compared with the vegetated and more protected islands, thereby strengthening the fertile island effect. Plant effects might also be expected to vary among broad functional groups (tree vs shrub vs grass; Hypothesis 2b). These broad groups could have varying effects on soil biogeochemistry because of marked differences in shape, size, and structural complexity. Quantifying the contribution of grazing by different herbivores at different pressures, plant traits, climate, and soil properties on fertile islands allowed us to assess current and future impacts of grazing on ecosystem structure and functioning across global drylands, where woody vegetation is a predominant plant form.</p

Visual exploratory activity and practice design: Perceptions of experienced coaches in professional football academies

The aim of this study was to explore: (a) football coaches’ perceptions of visual exploratory activity (VEA) and (b) the practice activities designed by coaches believed to develop VEA. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine coaches who held the UEFA A or B Licence in coaching football. All coaches worked in an English professional football club’s academy and held different coaching positions. Thematic analysis of the data identified three themes: Importance of VEA, Development of VEA and Delivery of VEA (e.g., practice design, visual aids, technology and questioning). The interviews revealed that all coa?ches hold VEA as an integral part of player performance yet are unsure of how to develop this behaviour. They deemed that VEA should be developed at a young age to enable players to reach an elite level of performance. Despite these views, coaches did not feel that VEA should be a particular focus on individual sessions and believed the VEA behaviour would be drawn out from practices used by coaches. There was a range of activities (N=33) discussed by the coaches when they were asked to draw and provide examples of practices that they would use to develop VEA. The percentage of planned practices that were deemed active decision-making activities (70%) was greater compared to non-active decision-making activities (30%). This study has implications for the planning and interventions coaches place on practices to develop VEA. Future research should consider investigating the impact different types of practice have on performers’ VEA. </p

Data and R code from "Grazing and ecosystem service delivery in global drylands"

There are two zip files with the data and R scripts used in the article "Grazing and ecosystem service delivery in global drylands". The file "Main_Data_code.zip" contains the data and R code used in the main analyses of the paper. These data also include the location and major environmental characteristics of the plots surveyed. The file "Livestock_data_code.zip" contains the data and R code used in the characterization and validation of grazing pressure levels (see Methods). Readme and metadata files including a description of the files, variables and units are provided. All the methodological details can be found in the article. Additional authors from the BIODESERT consortium not included in the author list (we reached the maximum number of authors allowed by figshare) include:  Víctor Rolo, Juan G. Rubalcaba, Jan C. Ruppert, Ayman Salah, Max A. Schuchardt, Sedona Spann, Ilan Stavi, Colton R. A.Stephens, Anthony M. Swemmer, Alberto L. Teixido, Andrew D. Thomas, Heather L. Throop, Katja Tielbörger, Samantha Travers, James Val, Orsolya Valkó, Liesbeth van den Brink, Sergio Velasco Ayuso, Frederike Velbert, Wanyoike Wamiti, Deli Wang, Lixin Wang, Glenda M. Wardle, Laura Yahdjian, Eli Zaady, Yuanming Zhang and Xiaobing Zhou </p