Elli Groner Ph.D

Research Area:
Ecology
elli@adssc.org
972-8-6539242
972-054-5969576
Google Scholar
ResearchGate
Current Students
- Nitzan Segev – PhD, (together with Oded Berger-Tal). AKIS, BGU
- Amr Smadi – MA, (together with Naama Teshner), Geography Dept, BGU
Current research:
My research deals with desert ecology at different levels. My main discipline is biodiversity and ecosystem, mostly of hyper-arid areas. I work on a variety of habitats including the loess slopes, wadies, sand dunes and alluvial plains. I work along the rainfall gradient from semi-arid to hyper arid. My main focus is what makes an ecosystem a healthy one and how do we quantify and value it. This includes biodiversity, ecosystem integrity and ecosystem services. I specialize on long term processes like temporal stability in Long Term Ecological Research sites. My research includes several projects:
- Desert Ecosystem Integrity – Ecosystem integrity has not been developed in the desert and we develop tools to estimate the integrity of ecosystems along the climate gradient. This includes work on biodiversity of arthropods below and above ground, soil properties and on the landscape level pattern formation of shrubs.
- Comparison of arid and hyper-arid ecosystems – we compare biodiversity, mostly of arthropods, on the border of the arid and hyper-arid systems. This is done in LTER sites.
- Eco-hydrology of a hyper-arid watershed (in Makhtesh Ramon)
- Ecosystem services – Nature’s contribution to people benefit is being assessed both in the Negev and Arava LTSER (Long TERM Soicio-Ecology Research) platform.
- Biodiversity and stability on sand dunes – Long term populations are measured in studying how encroachment of shrubs affects the stability of arthropods in Nizzanim LTER site and Samar dunes.
- Acacia population health – Long term monitoring and research of Acacia trees in the Arava LTSER platform.
- Recovery of Evrona nature reserve- monitoring of arthropods in Evrona after the 2014 oil spill.
Publications: