The 3D lab

A fifteen minutes city trip

Posted on February 17, 2016 by lembrechtsjonas

I am on a roll with my computerwork! With fieldwork being on hold till summer is back, I can thoroughly work on all the data analyses, and that is going very smooth.

With all that working inside, I feared however that I would totally miss the beginning of spring. Luckily, I had the opportunity last week for a fifteen minutes city trip to the ever-amazing city of Antwerp.

The inner tower of Het Steen, the old fortress on the shore of the river Scheldt

Sun was shining, the first hint of warmth was in the air, birds were becoming more active, the first few on my list of anticipated signs of spring could be crossed off.

Beautiful view over the river Scheldt.

By the way, I can truly recommend the concept of the fifteen minutes city trip to everybody! When the sun is out, you do not need more time to breath in the atmosphere of a city. Important is, you should not hurry. Just use one landmark that would shine the brightest in the sun and take in its beauty. In that way, a fifteen minutes citytrip is always better than no citytrip at all.

And after that, it is back to work with a fresh mind and fresh energy to get these awesome papers written!

The statue of Lange Wapper and Het Steen.

Posted in Belgium | Tagged Antwerp, Architecture, Belgium, City, City trip, Fortress, Landscape photography, Photography, Travel, Travel photography, Travelling | 2 Comments

The road to publication

Posted on February 15, 2016 by lembrechtsjonas

Sometimes, the road to publication feels a bit like this:

Muddy road through a field in Loonbeek, close to Brussels

A combination of a nice little sun as a promise for a reward in the far future, and crazy mud that will slow you down for months. Or picture this:

Bunkers filled with mean reviewers shooting with painfully reasonable comments at your troubled brain…

But last week, a major hord was crossed for my next (and currently dearest) paper. ‘The authors have addressed all my points satisfactorily. I don’t have any further suggestions to add.’ What a relief! I got major revisions on that paper and when it took more than a month to get an update on its status, I got worried.

Yet now, when the scary waiting is finally over, I can humbly admit that the review process worked perfect, again: the reviewers pointed out some true flaws in my paper. I adjusted them and made significant improvements to my manuscript. Good for me. Good for science. Good for everybody.

Posted in Belgium, Science | Tagged Agriculture, Belgium, Hiking, Landscape photography, Life, Nature photography, PhD, Photography, Publishing, Science, Winter | Leave a comment

The elegance of tea

Posted on February 12, 2016 by lembrechtsjonas

For the Dutch-speaking people here: I posted a story on tea on scilogs!

It tells the story how I had to buy 280 bags of tea at the local supermarket to participate in the Tea Bag Index, a cheap and elegant solution to measure decomposition rates on a global scale, and thus improve our knowledge of climate change.

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Posted in Ecology, Science | Tagged climate change, Ecology, Food, Global change, Landscape photography, Nature, Nature photography, Objects, Photography, Science, Tea, Tea bag index | 5 Comments

Lessons from history

Posted on February 10, 2016 by lembrechtsjonas

The Celts had been there. The Romans. Napoleon III. Soldiers had built stairs there for the German emperor. Century after century, people had climbed Le Grand Donon to overlook the world.

It had made for a mythical place, one where humans and nature had finally been integrated into one. One where the human influence finally seemed to do less bad than good for a while.

Coexistence. That feels like the key to me. A place that could host thousands of years of humans and still have the feel of its original roughness, that is a place where coexistence has been possible.

I let the wind blow right through me, gave me over to the power of nature and imagined I felt just like the Celts and Romans thousands of years before me.

Coexistence seems to be hard to find in my research, where human disturbance of the vegetation turns out – time after time – to be the most important driver of change.

Unfortunately, this disturbance often goes further than a little temple on the top.

Posted in France | Tagged Ecology, France, Hiking, History, Landscape photography, Mountains, Nature, Photography, Snow, Travel, Travelling, Winter | 11 Comments

Microclimate!

Posted on February 8, 2016 by lembrechtsjonas

It is that time of the year again: when the weather nicely reveals the effect of microclimate on the landscape.

If the world gets covered in a thin layer of snow, we can quickly see which spots are colder than others.

And that knowledge reveals some interesting patterns that would otherwise easily stay unnoticed. These patterns are very important for my research, which is why I am happy to share them with you.

It is easy to see what happened in this series of pictures. The snow covered the whole top of the mountain in a nice blanket, except for the trail. There, the snow did not want to stay, at least not at this intensity. We were the first (and maybe the only…) hikers of the day, so it was not a question of high traffic. More likely, it was a slight but significant difference in temperature between the vegetation and the open, disturbed, trail.

So it turns out our trail is slightly warmer than its environment, which might be a good thing. Yet, there is another side to this story: Even though the trail might be warmer at the moment, it will end up having no protective snow cover. When temperatures drop during the night, the soil surface on the trail will drop substantially more on the trail then around it.

Posted in France | Tagged Climate, Europe, France, Hiking, Landscape photography, Microclimate, Mountains, Photography, Snow, Travel, Winter | 6 Comments

On top of the world

Posted on February 5, 2016 by lembrechtsjonas

It is nice when the world reminds me again of why I called this blog ‘On top of the world’ in the first place.

It is this amazing thrill of climbing a mountain, working your way to the top, taking in the absolute beauty of mountain nature all around you.

Last week brought us to the top of ‘Le Grand Donon’, a top of a little bit more than a thousand meters of elevation in the far northeastern corner of France. It was a slightly different trip than I am used to, as the circumstances where slightly different from ideal.