Earlier this month, the journal Global Change Biology asked me to write a little commentary about a recent paper . Well, that’s an offer one cannot refuse! First of all: that’s a tremendous honour; thanks GCB to think of me to write such a commentary. Secondly: the paper, from one of our SoilTemp-colleagues Ilya Maclean, is a beauty and more than worth the extra press.
So I got Jonathan Lenoir on board and wrote ‘Microclimatic conditions anywhere at any time!’
How we can get microclimatic conditions anywhere at any time, using the mechanistic models from Maclean (2019) in Global Change Biology, and microclimate measurements (for example from our SoilTemp-network)
That is indeed exactly what we are celebrating here with this commentary: thanks to the computer models made by Maclean and colleagues, we can now finally – finally! – calculate microclimatic conditions anywhere in the world, and for any moment in the past, present ànd future. And that is important, as it is these local climate conditions – overlooked by traditional weather stations – that do matter for all biodiversity on earth.
Microclimate logger
So now, what is next in global change ecology research, given that we can now get the ‘real’ climatic conditions anywhere at any time? Well, we argue that the predictions should be matched with on-the-ground measurements from all over the world.
And that’s where our SoilTemp-database steps in. We would herewith like to renew our call to all researchers having microclimatic data records for a given location and microhabitat to share their data in a common and global geo-database: SoilTemp. More about that on soiltemp.weebly.com!
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