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While tillage of agricultural lands has been used extensively, its utilization for restoring degraded semi-natural lands is rare. This study was conducted in the arid southern Israel in a shrubland which has faced severe degradation processes over time, including soil erosion and compaction, and negation of vegetation recovery. In 2014, research plots were established for assessing the impact of a single chiseling session on the ecosystem's restoration capacity. The study treatments included deep chiseling (35 cm), shallow chiseling (20 cm), and control (no-tillage). Data on spontaneously-established vegetation was collected one, two, and three years after the plots' establishment, and soil data was collected once-three years after the plots' establishment. Assessments of the vegetation parameters revealed a general similarity between the two chiseling treatments, which were generally better than those of the no-till plots. The soil properties revealed generally greater soil quality under the two chiseling treatments than that under the control plots, and a somewhat better soil quality for the deep chiseling than that for the shallow chiseling. Overall, results of this study show that in severely degraded lands, self-restoration processes are hindered, negating the effectiveness of passive restoration practices, and necessitating active intervention practices to stimulate restoration processes.

Aim: To advance our understanding of the mechanisms that mediate the relationships between global climatic and anthropogenic processes and pathogen occurrence, it is crucial to evaluate the exact pathways connecting the ecological mediators and the pathogen responses across spatial and temporal heterogeneities at various scales.We investigated the pathways connecting these two types of heterogeneities in sand stabilization that were created by contrasting forces of various human activities and long-term droughts, and pathogen occurrence in host populations. The considered candidate ecological mediators were various components of host community structure, arthropod vector traits, and the pathogen occurrence in these vectors.Location: North-western Negev Desert's sands in Israel.