Tag Archives: Environment

Soil microbes care little about your climate gradients

Posted on August 5, 2025 by lembrechtsjonas

We had a hunch: the biogeography of soil microbial communities was going to be messy. Even less than plants or animals, microbes aren’t paying attention to the broad-brush macroclimatic gradients that ecologists often use to explain species distributions. They live … Continue reading →

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Extremes

Posted on July 20, 2025 by lembrechtsjonas

I’ve just returned from a field visit to northern Sweden – above the Arctic Circle. It was close to thirty degrees Celsius this week. We nearly got burned off the mountain. This kind of heat is no longer unusual. It … Continue reading →

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Boots in the bog

Posted on June 28, 2025 by lembrechtsjonas

Far in the north of the Netherlands, on the border of Friesland and Drenthe, lies an endless sea of moor-grass, heather, and rushes – spread out across one of the last active raised bogs in the country: the Fochteloerveen. A … Continue reading →

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An army of scientists

Posted on June 17, 2025 by lembrechtsjonas

This year, I had the joy (and challenge) of teaching Ecology to first-year biology students at Utrecht University for the very first time. Nearly 400 students, fresh into their academic journey, dipping their toes into the fascinating, complex, and urgently … Continue reading →

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Non-native plants along mountain trails

Posted on June 2, 2025 by lembrechtsjonas

We had been studying the role of mountain roads as drivers of non-native plant invasions in mountains all the way back till 2007. Heck, we just published a first manuscript on the decadal dynamics in those (Iseli et al. 2024)! … Continue reading →

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SoilTemp is now MEB!

Posted on May 31, 2025 by lembrechtsjonas

Over the past six years, I’ve poured my heart into SoilTemp. What started as a vision for a global soil temperature database quickly grew into something much more: a living, breathing community of researchers passionate about microclimate ecology. From the … Continue reading →

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