The 3D lab waves goodbye to another master student, with Sam having defended his thesis last week.

Sam travelled to the northern Scandes to study the drivers of plant community composition, and brought home some fascinating findings: while plant species turnover is mostly driven by climate, community structure is largely determined by soil conditions, such as the pH. That means: same diversity, different species in plots with the same acidity at different elevations.

Moreover, he dug up some proof for the existance of microrefugia: cold microclimates at the lower limit of alpine species distributions, where they can survive in a warming climate.

With that, we again lost a team member, but gained more knowledge!