The 3D lab

To the growth chamber

Posted on November 21, 2018 by lembrechtsjonas

This week, a new exciting research direction opened up: our PhD-student in Gembloux (Wallonia) launched a growth chamber experiment!

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The growth chamber

For me, this is an absolute first: to experience the ability to entirely control all conditions, without any noisy outside factor obscuring the outcome. In this case, we will use the advantages of the fully controlled environment to test if non-native plant species have locally adapted to growing conditions in the cities.

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Rows and rows of Matricaria seeds, ready to experience their artifical summer

We harvested seeds from Matricaria discoidea (see earlier) all across Flanders, in cities and rural areas, and now brought them all together in the controlled environment of our growth chamber. In these growth chambers, we manipulate the climate: we are simulating both a typical growing season, and a growing season with conditions as one might experience in the city (where the Urban Heat Island-effect dramatically increases temperatures).

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Matricaria discoidea, loving the urban environment

By bringing all of this together in the growth chamber, we can make sure we are actually testing for the effects of the changed temperature regime in the city, excluding all other possible drivers, which will give us a lot more information than we could get in the field.

For now, it is ‘fingers crossed’ that the seeds want to germinate!

All pictures courtesy of Charly Geron

Posted in Belgium, General | Tagged Cities, Ecology, Experiment, Growth chamber, Invasive species, Lab, Nature, Science, Urban ecology, Urban heat islands | Leave a comment

Smart bud(die)s

Posted on November 19, 2018 by lembrechtsjonas

Smart bud(die)s, or Knappe k(n)oppen in Dutch, is a citizen science project initiated by our research group at the University of Antwerp (together with ReaGent). It is tailored towards high schools, and aims to provide them with a fun and instructive way to be part of a real scientific experiment. In this case, aim is to study the budding of trees (hence the name), and the effect of daylength and climate on this budding.

Bringing a classroom in the forest: citizen science as it should be

Last week, I spent half a day in the forest with one such enthusiastic group of highschool students, and the dedicated scientists from our research group who introduced them to the forest. The goal that day was to slowly build up their knowledge of and interest in forests: first show them in general what a forest is, why it matters in the light of climate change, and how scientists like us are studying these forests.

A litter trap: capturing falling leaves to study the effect of climate and weather on forest dynamics

The students got to make their own preparation of leaves to study under a microscope, explored the different measurement devices spread throughout the forest (which is a dedicated ICOS long-term research site, and thus closely monitored on all levels), and learn a range of facts from photosynthesis to heathland management. They got to run through the forest, and admire its mushrooms. All of it to get them involved and fascinated about the trees they will be studying next.

A student counting bubbles in the water as a measure of photosynthesis

Such community-driven science is very different from how science is traditionally done, at the far end of the spectrum one might consider when thinking about scientific outreach. It is putting science and the community into one pot and stirring it vigorously. The resulting dish tastes fascinatingly refreshing: children who get to learn about science while doing it, who experience how to care about the world that surrounds them, and look at it with curiosity.

Learning about forests and their role in climate change in one of the best monitored forests of the country

It is a huge commitment for the involved scientists, that much is certain. But it serves one of the main goals of science, and as such is worth as much effort as any experiment.

Heathland management and why it matters

When science and society come together

Posted in Belgium, General | Tagged Belgium, Citizen science, climate change, Ecology, Forest, Global change, Nature, Science, Students, Teaching | 3 Comments

Dovre

Posted on November 16, 2018 by lembrechtsjonas

The beginning of this week brought me to Dovre, a stunning National Park in the center of Norway.

The viewpoint on Snøhetta in Dovre

The area is sitting a 2,5 hours of steady uphill driving south of Trondheim, and was covered in a beautiful November snow blanket.

A little juniper sticking its head through the fresh November snow

Yet the beauty and the vastness of the place were not the reason why I went there. No, that reason was science: we met with a team of 4 to officially launch our recently started PhD-project on the effect of trails on mountain vegetation.

Hiking up a trail in winter will affect plants in summer

The 3 days of discussion turned out to be the kind of meeting every scientists dreams of once in a while: little distractions, just brainstorming with fascinating ecologists about what could be happening along our mountain trails – and how we could figure that out.

Tea and talks with a view

We all are very much looking forward to the coming 3,5 years, with fieldwork both in this area and higher north, in Swedish Lapland. If all goes well, these years will teach us how hiking trails affect the vegetation in our mountains, and what we should do about it.

Betula nana

Exciting times ahead!

More pictures of Dovre on the right of this blog.

Posted in General, Norway | Tagged Ecology, Fieldwork, Global change, Landscape photography, Nature photography, PhD, Scandinavia, Science, Travel photography, Winter | 3 Comments

Food on the move

Posted on November 10, 2018 by lembrechtsjonas

On this blog, we mostly talk about how global change is causing species to go ‘on the move’, towards areas where they do not occur naturally. For this post, however, I’d like to turn that perspective around, and talk about another type of species movement, one that is a large part of this global change: the transportation effort needed to bring your food from farm to plate.

Most of all, I want to highlight here an alternative to this #FoodOnTheMove: short-chain farming and community-supported agriculture.

This week, our local community-supported farm distributed this autumn’s potato harvest among its members. I got to take home a nice 17 kg – and one tomato that was looking to perfect to let go.

CSA – or community-supported agriculture – is an agricultural system that aims to connect producer and consumers more closely. Usually, one subscribes to the harvest of one farm or a group of farms. CSA is also on the rise in Western societies, and below I would like to make a strong case why I think that is a good thing.

Anticipating a summer full of beans at our local CSA-farm

Based on my own experience, CSA is beneficial to me – and the world – in a wide range of ways:

First of all: the environmental gain! A largely plant-based diet is already a big plus for the environment compared to a meat-oriented one, but if those plants are being brought in from far away (or grown in heated greenhouses), there is a substantial environmental cost associated with them. Short-chain farming largely cuts out that transport chain, and the environmental cost associated with it. Moreover, a farm with a diversity of vegetables, as opposed to the kilometers long monocultures seen in industrial farming provides a certain advantage for biodiversity, as does the space gained in third-world countries if you don’t let your food fly in.
Delicious vegetables, and an un-dreamed variety of them. Vegetables coming fresh from the soil are just that much tastier than their packed and transported shop counterparts. At our farm, there is also so much choice that one is much easier ‘tricked’ into discovering less-known vegetables.

Following the season: CSA can teach you again how it is not to have all vegetables available in each season. We now follow ‘earth’s heartbeat’ again, instead of having the same common vegetables all year round. The latter also has a big environmental cost associated with it, as the off-season versions of vegetables often need a serious energy investment.
Get out in the field: often, CSA-farms offer their community the option to help in the field, harvest their own vegetables, or assist with planting and weeding. While this is a great way to get your mind empty, your longs clean and your hands dirty, it also brings back the connection with nature and what you eat. To me, it also thought me how much effort is needed to feed the world as a whole (and me in particular).

Volunteering on the farm to plant onions is a joy. Eating your ‘own’ onions a few months later even more so.

Any downsides to this way of farming? The price perhaps, it is obviously not as cheap as what you would find in the supermarket, and – at least in our case – you pay up front at the beginning of the year. The latter implies that a bad harvest is also carried by the community. The cost for the farmer is another thing: this type of agriculture usually implies a large personal investment from the farmer, not in the least regarding time and energy.

That aside, I do think that CSA can and should play a major role in how we live our lives in the future.

For the locals: I can totally recommend our CSA-farm ‘de Plukheyde‘ in Kampenhout, Belgium.

Posted in Belgium, General | Tagged Agriculture, CSA, Ecological farming, Ecology, Environment, Farming, Global change, Nature, Photography | 2 Comments

The Tundra Trait Team

Posted on October 25, 2018 by lembrechtsjonas

In ecology, it is not only relevant where a plant is growing (as is the usual topic of our research here), but also how it looks like when it grows there. The latter is reflected in the concept of traits: characteristics of a species’ ecological strategies and life histories, underlying differences in the way species acquire and use resources. For plants, these traits could reflect values related to their size, nutrient acquisition or seed production.

Measuring the height of an individual of Matricaria discoidea in a roadside

Such traits reflect the direct interaction between a species and its habitat, even more than their presence or absence at a certain location does. Variation in traits is thus often closely linked to environmental variation, like changes in climate.

In the high tundra (like here in the northern Swedish mountains), plants usually stay close to the ground, as illustrated by this Salix herbacea in a soft moss bed.

In order to analyze large-scale effects of the environment on plant performance, however, a lot of trait data is needed. But here is the great news: countless scientists are collecting such data all over the world. The trick is just to bring all this data together. The TRY-database does a great job in that regard, yet that database had a big and important limitation: the Arctic was highly underrepresented. A new effort (led by Anne Bjorkman and the Tundra Trait Team) has now filled that void, by collating a database of over 90.000 (!) data points about plant traits from tundra vegetation.

Measuring the Specific Leaf Area of the Arctic birch (Betula pubescens czerepanovii)

That is a lot of trait data, and the possibilities with such a database are virtually endless. We can use it to see how species react to climate across the whole tundra biome, for example, which can shed important light on how the tundra vegetation will be (and is) reacting to the changing climate. The latter is illustrated in another recent paper from the same team in Nature, in which Bjorkman et al. explore the relationships between temperature, moisture and plant traits across the whole tundra. Their conclusions? Plant height is rapidly increasing with the warming climate in recent decades, yet most other traits are lagging behind.

Thalictrum alpinum, a small alpine version of a genus with usually tall-growing species

Another example of how scientists are teaming up everywhere to tackle issues that are to big to handle alone. And that’s exactly how I love it.

Tall, woody species (like this pine, Pinus sylvestris) only occur up till a certain elevation and latitude

Reference:

Bjorkman et al. (2018) Tundra Trait Team: A database of plant traits spanning the
tundra biome, Global Ecology and Biogeography.

Bjorkman AD, IH Myers-Smith, SC Elmendorf, S Normand, N Rüger, et al. Changes in plant functional traits across a warming tundra biome. Nature. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0563-7

Astragalus alpinus

Posted in General, Science | Tagged Alpine, arctic, Ecology, Landscape photography, Mountains, Nature, Nature photography, Plant photography, Plants, Science, Traits | Leave a comment

Stress

Posted on October 22, 2018 by lembrechtsjonas

It is that time of year again: the course on plant stress for our master students at the University of Antwerp (as I also wrote about previous years).

This year, the practical part got a long-anticipated upgrade. It is now framed within a new course called ‘Plant and soil ecology’, which is thought to the master students in Conservation Ecology and the very new masters on Global Change Ecology. We could now also step away from teaching only about chlorophyll fluorescence as we did the previous years.

The new set-up of the practicum, featuring the fluorometer to measure chlorophyll fluorescence on the left, the pressure bomb in the middle, and our little friend Dualex Scientific+ on the right.

Now, the practicum is about plant stress in general, and we use it to highlight different ways in which ecologists can measure stress. Students get to try 3 different methods – using the traditional fluorometer I always used, but also a very practical tool called the Dualex Scientific+ that rapidly measures chlorophyll and pigment content in the leaves, and a pressure bomb, that allows them to assess the water status of plants by putting pressure on a leaf till water emerges.

Measuring chlorophyll content with the Dualex Scientific+ in a project on the effect of Urban Heat Islands on non-native plant species in Flanders

The practicum thus now truly reflects the wide range of opportunities ecologists have to get answers to this fundamental question in our field: how happy is this plant? And I truly hope the students find that knowledge inspirational for their future careers as conservation biologists of global change ecologists.