Today was a day of big numbers, for me and the SoilTemp-project we are working on: our database passed two fantastic milestones. We now have over 5000 loggers from more than 40 countries in the database, which I am currently patiently compiling.

Especially that last number is mind-boggling: friends and colleagues from over 40 countries in the world have generously offered their data to our growing project, believing we would do good science with it. And so we will!

A whole new batch of loggers is ready to be installed this summer, to expand our growing network even further

A major step forward will come the beginning of next month, when a first SoilTemp-meeting will take place. We are proud to welcome a group of 35 experts microclimate and species distribution experts to Antwerp, for 3 days of exciting discussion about how to move forward with this unique dataset.

The city of Antwerp will be the scene for our first international SoilTemp symposium, early June

After that, it will be a head on sprint towards the first results. And keeping up the tireless work to compile more data, as the non-European coverage of our dataset is still patchy. So I am finishing with another call: if you have soil temperature data, especially from outside Europe, please get in touch, as we will be able to do great things together!