I am happy and honoured to announce some fantastic news: this week, we got a 4-years Fundamental Research Grant from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) to strengthen our research on species (re)distributions in the Scandinavian mountains, in the framework of the Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN).

A four-year grant to look even closer at the alpine vegetation of northern Scandinavia than we already did, aiming to check off some important scientific questions off our list

This major consolidation of the work we have been doing throughout my PhD and postdoc and with the whole MIREN-network, is a unique opportunity to get closer to the answers we are hunting for.

We have been zooming in more and more throughout the years, while our knowledge of species (re)distributions grows. This grant is another opportunity to delve below the soil surface

A dedicated PhD-student will be focussing on the dynamics of upward moving plant species along mountain roads and trails, and dive deeper into the role of mycorrhizae in this. We will do more in-situ experiments in the mountains and start building more on the growing long-term MIREN-dataset.

Trifolium repens, the white clover, has been one of our favourite go-to study species for long. It better braces itself to be bothered a bit more in the future! 

This is another giant leap forward for our mountain ecological research, and we are thus endlessly grateful to the FWO and its reviewers for believing in the potential of our proposal. We promise not to disappoint!

So buckle up, cause our scientific ride just got a bit wilder again!