The 3D lab

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Posted on August 30, 2014 by lembrechtsjonas

This post was originally posted here, on the Arctic Research blog of the Interact network.

We are back in Abisko after two months. Right before the start of the rainy autumn weather – it might fall upon us on our last day – we are here to harvest the seedlings of our two-year experiment.

We take a week to skim the mountains and bring down the harvest to the research station.

Our nonnative species now had two growing seasons to show their best survival skills. For most of them, that turned out to be barely a centimeter of growth, but there were also some heros that made into full grown plants.

The hikes in the mountains gave us the opportunity to enjoy the beautiful end-of-august atmosphere in the Swedish mountains. Beautiful colours in the sun, amazing little fuzzy plants, pretty golden mushrooms and cute lemmings collecting their winter fat.

The sun is still around for some days, so we gonna make the most out of our short stay in the north. We might take some seconds to harvest two or three blueberries, we might take a detour to get a nice view on the valley, but we will especially enjoy the nice data we are collecting, as they promise us so many fascinating answers.

Posted in Sweden | Tagged Autumn, Ecology, Fieldwork, Mountains, Nature, Photography, Pictures, Plants, Science, Summer, Travel, Wildlife | Leave a comment

On the fly

Posted on August 28, 2014 by lembrechtsjonas

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We welcome you aboard just another flight.

I have been flying a lot this summer, and yesterday brought three more flights in a row. Brussels-Copenhagen, Copenhagen-Stockholm and Stockholm-Kiruna.

Three more times the safety instructions, three more times drinking tea from a cardboard cup.

Three more times living the dream above the clouds and experiencing the surrealistic feeling of viewing the world from above.

All the plains brought me back to Abisko, in Northern Scandinavia. For the last time this summer, I will go there to check on my plants. We will harvest our first experiment (finally!) and bring back the plants to Belgium.

I hope to share some nice stories and pictures with you the next days!

Posted in General, Sweden | Tagged Airplane, Clouds, Denmark, flying, Nature, Photography, Scandinavia, Summer, Travel | Leave a comment

Chasing Europe’s Big 5

Posted on August 26, 2014 by lembrechtsjonas

This is a guest post from Sofie Lembrechts, about a nature photography trip to Spain. While I am mainly a photographing ecologist, she had to become an ecological photographer in order to catch the big mammals of Europe with her camera.

The story of a girl, wildly chasing a wild dream… To become a wildlife photographer.

I went to the north of Spain with Europe’s big 5. They organise ecological trips to search for the Big 5 of Europe’s mammals, and many more wild nature.

This trip went to the ‘picos de europa’, with as main goal to get in the tracks of bears, wolves, wild cats, birds, … There were two goals for me this trip. To see the animals in their natural environment and to make pictures of them…

The first goal was surprisingly easy to achieve. Jan, the guide, knew all the places and he could even make sure we saw wolves already on the very first day. It required big adventures, with hours of sea sickness on a boat or endless staring through dense fog, but the reward was big: every day we saw at least one big mammal.

The second goal however was less easy to accomplish… With only a small telephoto lens I could just not come close enough…

One day, we heard a rumour that a bear was spotted in the village nearby a hotel. This was my chance! We hid on a mountain slope till the bear would come out to look for a snack.

And there he was! Still not close enough for a good picture, but at least close enough to see him on my camera! It was very exciting to see him so close by! I’m very happy that I achieved my first goal, and I learned that it might require some next level expensive camera gear to accomplish the second one.

Just accept it from me: those big predators are even more breathtaking without bars to keep you safe.

Posted in Spain, Uncategorized | Tagged Bears, Big 5, Birds, Ecology, Europe, Mammals, Nature, Photography, Spain, Travel, Travelling, Wildlife | 2 Comments

Marshing on

Posted on August 25, 2014 by lembrechtsjonas

My playtime is limited on my international working trips. If I want to see a little bit of the environment, I have to be inventive and time-efficient.

My forced visit to Philadelphia airport while waiting for a connection flight provided an ideal occasion for a photography trip.

On a nice, sunny afternoon, while my baggage was safely deposited at the baggage drop, I took the airport shuttle to its first stop: a peaceful bunch of houses called Eastwick. A short walk brought me to the entrance of the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, an area of marshland for which I had very humble expectations.

These expectations had to be adjusted upward immediately. While the sun slowly gained heat, I was dropped in a world full of birds, deer, squirrels and butterflies.

The swamp was in its full summer glory, preceded by the flourishing swamp rose mallow.

It was an unprecedentedly easy acces to all nature’s beauty: wooden boardwalks, watch-towers, viewpoints on the lakes, everything was there.

I do not know if all USA’s suburban nature has this high standards, but this random peace of marsh bordering the international airport was definitely a jewel.

For those stuck at Philadelphia airport: I do recommend the trip, but only from a 5 hour wait onwards, as you do not want to be stressed out. The train rides every half an hour and makes the trip in 4 minutes. The refuge is on a 20 minutes walk at most from the train station. It gets nice as soon as you pass the information center.

Posted in USA | Tagged Airport, America, Birds, Coast, John Heinz, Marsh, Nature, Philadelphia, Photography, Plants, Refuge, Summer, Travel, USA, Wildlife | 4 Comments

Airport ecology

Posted on August 20, 2014 by lembrechtsjonas

I was happy that I could lay hands on a textbook on Urban Ecology with 50 percent reduction at the conference in California.

This urban ecology is a big fascination of mine: with large portions of the earth surface changed into systems driven by humans, the ecology of those urban areas is both highly important and interesting.

As I had a slow day in between flights back to Europe, I decided to take a look around on the airport of Philadelphia to get an idea of the diversity of species that managed to survive there.

And I did find a wide variety there. As usual, the true culture followers were there: sparrows, starlings and rock doves,

as well as their floristic counterparts like the white clover.

But it got even better. The best thing about airports is that they are spacious. For the sake of smooth air transportations, large areas are left green and fairly undisturbed. It is a weak comparison to ‘real nature’, but for many species it seems to be enough.

A well-tended airport will moreover in the best case host a variety of trees and flowers. That creates opportunities for ever nicer encounters, like with this amazing papilio butterfly.

We truly have some winners, here, the main message of urban ecology: some species know how to adapt to the new system, which will give them a myriad of new options for the future.

There was only this one bird species I could not recognize…

Posted in USA | Tagged Airport, Birds, butterfly, City, Ecology, Flowers, flying, Garden, Nature, Philadelphia, Travel, Traveling, Urban ecology, USA | 2 Comments

Drought in the lake

Posted on August 18, 2014 by lembrechtsjonas

California currently experiences the most extreme drought in the history of the state. It is so dry that they started desalinating the water of the ocean on a large scale (an interesting newsflash I learned from CNN at the airport).

Those sunny, hot days might be a blessing for tourists like me that have limited time to enjoy the beauty of the state, but all others the summer is slowly turning into a true hell.

The radio was reporting about the high forest fire risks in the mountains in the south of the state while I drove up to Jenkinson lake at the foothills of the Sierra.

The waterlevel here immediately indicates that this lake also suffers from the drought. Snowfall, and hence spring flow, has been limited and rains has been low for at least 3 consecutive years.

The drought cracks provide some interesting patterns for the camera, but for the plants in the forest around the lake, it is a real struggle.

The pines seem pretty good at ignoring the poor conditions, though, but it is known those trees are impressive survivors. You should mark the ecological significance of that: with their roots, they might still be reaching nice, wet parts of the soil. They do not experience the worst elements of the drought like you would think at first sight. You might wanna keep that in mind next time you think about plants and their wonderful survival tricks.

By the way, the little saplings do not have this developed root systems, so they might have big troubles germinating and growing. So growing possibilities are different at every life stage of the plant.