Literature Review of Relief-Soil-Plant Interaction in Rock Outcrops

Rock outcrops (ROs) are geological-geomorphological features that span a wide variety of climates and biomes. In hot arid and semiarid regions, ROs support the occurrence of landscape elements different from those in the surrounding matrix. Furthermore, ROs are essential for protecting and maintaining specialized ecosystems, serving as a shelter for biodiversity. This importance is even more visible with the growing number of publications. A systematic literature review synthesized the relief-soil-vegetation relations influenced by ROs under hot arid and semiarid climates. A bibliometric survey was carried out on the Scopus platform throughout the available sample period (1903-2022). The searches focused only on research and review articles in English in the title, abstract, and keyword fields. Most ROs studies focused on biological components, mainly vegetation, while climate, relief, and soil are considered support variables. ROs are essential for the occurrence and persistence of specialized ecosystems. Differential erosion, faults and accumulation of sediments, organic residues and water create microhabitats in ROs. These microhabitats host a high richness and diversity, once submit species to different temperature and soil moisture regimes. This diversification of microhabitats provides biodiversity with relatively safer and more stable shelters, characterizing them as refuges in dry climates and protecting elements that indicate past temporal conditions. Future studies/analyses should investigate how variables operate in these environments.