Tag Archives: Ecology
36.000 tea bags for science
It has become the go-to technique for many ecologists who need a cheap and simple method to measure decomposition rates in the soil: burying tea bags. However, it is still rather mindboggling that the team behind the international Tea Bag … Continue reading
Filling the gaps
Anyone working with microclimate data is familiar with time series data – repeated measurements over time at the same location. And anyone working with time series has bumped into an important potential issue with them: gaps. More often than not, … Continue reading
A wealth of wildflowers
One could wonder if the microclimate-based models of Haesen et al. would have predicted such a wealth of wildflowers in the garden of our new home! This is our first spring in our new garden, and we could thus have … Continue reading
A drastic shift in mycorrhizal communities
One of the key findings of the Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN) is that mountain roads have a MASSIVE impact on their surrounding vegetation. Whole communities are changing, non-native species are moving in, and all kinds of species are moving … Continue reading
Scouting the cliffs of Freÿr
On a sunny day in early spring, our team took the car to one of the most monumental locations in Belgium: the cliffs of Freÿr. These beautiful slabs of ‘naked’ limestone of up to 120 meter, overlooking the river Meuse, … Continue reading
A new beginning
Last week, I spent a delightful day at my soon-to-be new home university in Utrecht. A day packed with discussions on scientific ambitions, teaching plans, and meeting new colleagues and ongoing research in the group. The first tulip of the … Continue reading