The 3D lab

Mapping the trail survey

Posted on September 12, 2018 by lembrechtsjonas

This summer has been highly successful for our MIREN trail survey. We can proudly present this map showing all the (approximated) locations where people have observed one of our focal plant species (red and white clover, common yarrow and narrowleaf plantain) along mountain trails.

Hiking trail in Abisko, northern Sweden

This map is a work in progress, of course, and we will be updating it while data keeps flowing in. We are currently still expecting observations from at least 200 more kilometers of trail!

With spring creeping up in the southern hemisphere, we will now switch our focus down under. This is thus a call for anybody who will be visiting mountains on the southern hemisphere to join the project and get your own star on our map! South American, African or Australian mountain enthusiasts, if you are lucky enough to be going out in the amazing nature, please think of us while you are there, and record the location of our study species if you happen to see them.

Even when you are lucky enough to see a guanaco on your hike through the Andes, don’t forget to look at your feet to check for our non-native plant species!

The southern hemisphere is of particular interest to us for this study, as all of our study species are either non-native there, or not (yet) present. This will help us comparing how their spread along mountain trails happens in both their native and introduced range, and which regions are currently invader-free.

All information on how to join can be found here.

Posted in General, Science | Tagged Animal photography, Ecology, Hiking, Invasive species, Mountains, Nature, Nature photography, Plants, Science, Travel, Travel photography | Leave a comment

The Bayou

Posted on September 7, 2018 by lembrechtsjonas

A little throwback post to the great time I had attending the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in New Orleans, beginning of August.

Alligator floating through the Old Pearl River in the Mississippi delta

You can read all about the theme of the conference, and how that made me feel very much at home, in this blogpost.

Old bridge over the Old Pearl river

Now, I just want to treat you to some pictures from the marshes, swamps and ‘bayous’ of the Mississippi delta, one of the natural wonders Louisiana and New Orleans are famous for.

The green wonders of the Louisiana bayou

As I learned on our little boat trip during our half a day break from the conference, a bayou is a slow-flowing river in the flatlands. What I also learned, is that it often hosts a variety of fantastic animals.

Curious raccoons

A more important thing we learned, unfortunately, is that Louisiana is experiencing rapid wetland loss in its coastal area, as a result of large-scale attempts in the last decades to get water levels under control.

The bayous and marshes on the Mexican Gulf play a crucial role as coastal protection.

One of the devastating results of this rapid wetland loss is a much higher vulnerability for storms and hurricanes, which brings us back to the main theme of the conference: with weather events observed and predicted to become more extreme, and humans increasingly disturbing the landscape, the negative impacts of global change are bound to accelerate in the near future.

Alligator

You feel that when you are floating on the slow waters of the bayou, I can assure you. And you just hope these natural wonders are here to stay for a very long time.

A heron hunting for fish

Alligator munching on marshmallow snack

Posted in General, USA | Tagged Animal photography, Animals, Bayou, Ecology, Global change, Nature, Nature photography, New Orleans, Outdoors, Science, Travel, Travel photography, USA | 5 Comments

Catching the Arctic summer

Posted on September 3, 2018 by lembrechtsjonas

When summer treats you kindly in the Arctic, there is no better place to be. Summers are short up in the north, however, so you’ll need to be lucky to catch them.

The midnight sky in northern Sweden, end of July

We were very lucky this year, and were offered countless beautiful summer days up in the north. Some of the most memorable ones were offered when surveying our field sites on mount Nuolja, close to Abisko, which we got to experience in the best possible light.

The author, enjoying an evening on mount Nuolja after a long day of satisfactory fieldwork

Such an opportunity for summer weather needs to be taken with both hands, so we decided to spend the night on the mountain, greatly reducing the time effort needed to hike up and down.

Pyrola minor, one of the countless botanical beauties this summer brought

That decision resulted in two unforgettable fieldwork days, in which we managed to get so many plots done, while still enjoying one of the most crucial reasons why we were there in the first place: the Swedish mountains are just so beautiful!

The trail to the top of mount Nuolja, one of the stars of this summer’s fieldwork

When I am writing this, September is already in full swing again, bringing another great fieldwork season to an end. The outdoor life is mostly behind us, and lab and computer work is again on the horizon. But with fieldwork days like these in our memories, how can I lack the necessary energy to tackle that?

An alpine meadow (with a.o. Taraxacum officinale, Bistorta vivipare, Anthoxanthum odoratum and a leaf of Trollius europaeus) in the evening sun

As usual: more soon!

Posted in General, Sweden | Tagged Ecology, Fieldwork, Hiking, Landscape photography, Mountain ecology, Mountains, Outdoors, Scandinavia, Science, Travel, Travel photography | 1 Comment

Adding stones to the mountain

Posted on August 30, 2018 by lembrechtsjonas

I felt humbled and proud at the same time when I realized my paper citation count on Google Scholar reached 100 this week. I know, modern science is focussing way too much on the numbers, but what this particular number mostly means to me, is that my voice is starting to be heard. The science we do, the answers we find, they are being used as little building blocks for the giant and ever-growing mountain that is our collective scientific knowledge.

Adding your stone to the top of the pile

Adding your little stone on top of that pile is the most exciting feeling I had as a PhD-student. But now, I feel that my stones start supporting new stones, as the pile keeps growing, and that is even more satisfactory. So I know that this ‘100’ does not mean anything on its own, yet the knowledge that I can contribute, that I can help push science forward, does. A lot.

Making your voice heard in science takes time, but is oh so rewarding

Posted in General, Science | Tagged Ecology, Landscape, Landscape photography, Mountains, PhD, PhD-life, Photography, Scandinavia, Scicomm, Science | 3 Comments

SoilTemp: towards a global map and database of soil temperature and climate

Posted on August 24, 2018 by lembrechtsjonas

Short: we are looking for soil temperature data from all over the world for inclusion in our global database. Update: find the SoilTemp-website here!

Many questions in ecology revolve around climate: what climatic requirements do organisms have, how do they survive in extreme climatic conditions, and – increasingly relevant – how do they deal with the rapid changes in climate we are experiencing?

Despite climate thus being a crucial component of today’s ecological research, we are still very much limited in the climatic data we have to our disposal to actually answer these questions, especially at the global scale. Most of the data we do have comes from weather stations (or interpolations based on those): coarse-grained data measured at two meter above the ground.

Climate and temperatures are and have always been a crucial factor in ecological research

For many organisms, however, these free-air climatic averages are far from relevant: many species operate at much smaller spatial or temporal scales, for example. Free-air temperature and climate patterns also differ significantly from what happens at the soil surface, or a few centimeters below it. For many organisms in the soil and close to the surface (soil micro-organisms, ground beetles, herbs, forbs, mosses or tree seedlings, for example) there is thus a large mismatch between the climatic data we have, and the climate they actually experience.

For forest understory species, free-air temperature is meaningless, as temperatures at the forest floor will differ several degrees from what happens above the forest canopy

However, while the quality and resolution of free-air and surface temperature data at the global scale is rapidly improving thanks to elaborated networks of weather stations and satellite data, the availability of soil temperature datasets is still largely limited. That is the rationale behind our launch of SoilTemp, a global effort to develop a database of soil temperature data and build global maps of soil climate that answer to the pressing needs of modern ecologists.

For alpine species, temperatures close to the surface are what matters, especially in winter, when they can hide from the frost under a protective snow cover

Yet for such a global effort, we will need your help! If you feel one or more of the following statements apply to you, please e-mail jonas.lembrechts [at] uantwerpen.be for more information:

1) You have georeferenced soil temperature data (any depth) for a period of at least 1 month with maximum a 4-hour interval, and would like it to be part of this open access global database.

2) You have associated species (plants or other taxa) composition or trait data from the same location.

3) You know other possible partners with interesting soil temperature datasets, or working on similar topics, who might be interested in collaborating.

4) You are interested to be involved in this project in any other way.

Small and cheap temperature loggers (like these iButtons) have recently made such a global-scale endeavour as ‘SoilTemp’ possible

Posted in General, Science | Tagged Biogeography, Climate, climate change, Climatology, Ecology, Nature, Science, Temperature | 1 Comment

You’ll never hike alone

Posted on August 18, 2018 by lembrechtsjonas

It can be quiet lonely out in the mountains: the open vastness of the alpine tundra, the kilometers of rolling mountains in the distance without a soul in sight, or the silence that resonates through the rustling of leaves and the splattering of streams tumbling down a water slide.

Reindeer with calf in Laktatjakka valley, northern Sweden

But that loneliness never lasts long, as one never hikes alone in the mountains. There is often an animal in sight, and this post aims to celebrate the companionship these animals offer to the lonely scientist or hiker out in the field.

Marmoset overlooking the world from his den, Davos, Switzerland

From the tiniest songbirds hopping from shrub to rock to the herds of reindeer in search for a cool snowbed; from the characteristic squeaking of marmosets in the Swiss Alps to the angry cry of a skua in a Swedish valley. It is those unexpected visits that make mountain fieldwork that extra bit exciting, even – or specially so – for a plant ecologist like me.

Skua taking a bath close to our campsite on mount Nuolja, northern Sweden

We had many of those encounters in this year’s fieldwork period. Especially in the northern Scandes, it seemed to be a good year for many animals. After a few years of silence, voles and lemmings were back in fairly large numbers. As a consequence, their hunters were also out in force: skuas, owls, foxes, ravens and buzzards, all of them were profiting in a way from the sudden abundance in food.

Buzzard scanning the valley from above

For us, all these animals were a blessing: enjoying the sunset with the sound of golden plovers in the background, or surveying vegetation while some reindeer race by: it makes one forget more easily how long fieldwork days can be.