Tag Archives: Nature

How to set up your own microclimate network

Posted on August 16, 2025 by lembrechtsjonas

Back in 2021, we had an important thought: maybe we should start treating microclimate the same way we treat macroclimate. Weather and climate are monitored by national governments through organized, standardized networks – so why not microclimate too? We wrote … Continue reading →

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Monocultures

Posted on August 11, 2025 by lembrechtsjonas

Our EcoFracNet biodiversity monitoring project is gathering momentum. Over the past months, we’ve been roaming the Netherlands, clipboards in hand, from endless heathlands to city parks, to record plant diversity in hundreds of 1 m² plots. With several hundred plots … Continue reading →

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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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