Mountain grassland ecosystems are vital for a variety of essential functions and services. They provide grazing land for wildlife and livestock, clean water, carbon storage, and support traditional ways of life. Globally, mountains have historically been managed under similar environmental constraints, often as communal rangelands. These regions, inhabited by indigenous and local communities, have relied READ MORE
Category: Research
Research on sustainable climate and nature governance funded
We recently received funding from the Norwegian Research Council for new project ECOBUDGETS! This collaborative project brings together expertise on land use governance and climate budgets from UiB, NIBIO, NINA, City of Bergen and Vestland County Council, and will explore ways to integrate climate and nature budgets into administrative and political decisions at the municipal READ MORE
Research is not done in a flash in the best of times. Fieldwork, data analyzes and writing take time. But this time it took over ten years, two doctorates and one baby to get there. We have just published a new article in the scientific journal Ecography. The article describes how grass and grass-like species, READ MORE
Tundra might turn from carbon sink into carbon source due to global warming
Tundra ecosystems hold vast amounts of carbon, which is projected to be released into the atmosphere under climate warming. Our group contributed to this important and alarming new paper in Nature, led by researchers from Umeå University in Sweden. Using carbon flux data collected inside and outside open-top chambers (OTCs), we show that ecosystem respiration READ MORE
Plant Functional Traits Course engages in South African RangeX sites
In December 2023, the 7th plant functional traits course (PFTC7) took place in the Drakensberg mountains of South Africa. We were particularly pleased that this led to a collaboration with the RangeX project. During PFTCs, research is usually conducted along an elevational gradient. This time, the highest location at ca. 3000m coincided with the high READ MORE
RangeX writing retreat in Ireland
In November 2023, the RangeX team spend a productive week in Ireland, delving into various tasks, data sets, and papers. Numerous constructive discussions ensued, generating ideas for future project outputs. We outlined the joint field experiment data paper, incorporating data sets from China, Switzerland, Norway, and South Africa. The team members focusing on aboveground interactions READ MORE
New SeedClim paper out in PNAS
Studying climate change through a plant’s perspective It is finally here! In our recently published paper ‘Biotic rescaling reveals importance of species interactions for variation in biodiversity responses to climate change‘ in PNAS, we present important findings from the ongoing SeedClim project. Understanding climate-induced changes in biodiversity is complex, especially when different studies report varying rates, READ MORE
FunCaB has a logo!
A picture speaks a thousand words. They’re great ways to communicate and summarise a lot of information in a very compact format. They’re also great for making links and associations. This is why we use logos, right? I had a go building a logo for the funcab project, which (hopefully!) distills the main aims of READ MORE
Spreading the word: presenting at the IAVS conference
Fieldwork for plant ecologists in Norway normally begins in June, and the hard work we put into our site maintenance and data collection pays off when we are able to share our findings with vegetation scientists from around the world. From the 20th to the 24th of June 2017, a conference was held on the READ MORE
Second day of the ClimMani workshop
Aud Halbritter made a video of the second day of the ClimMani workshop. Researchers from around the world arrived at Finse by train before making the 2 km ski journey to the research station. For some, this was their first experience of skiing, and for many it was their first experience of skiing in the READ MORE