Background Alpine grasslands are vulnerable to climate change, and are currently changing rapidly in both plant functional group dominance (1) and species distributions (2). These biotic shifts contribute to indirect effect of climate change through influencing biotic interactions (3,4). Indeed, research is still needed on the effect of climate on long-term vegetation dynamics (5). Our READ MORE
MSc thesis: Impacts of range-expanding plants on pollinator interactions
Project background As both native and exotic species shift their distributions in response to climate warming and through biological invasions, many expand their ranges across elevational gradients. This expansion results in the reassembly of ecological communities, which meditates the effects of climate warming on biodiversity and key ecosystem functions. RangeX is a multidisciplinary, replicated field READ MORE
MSc thesis: Disentangling drivers of plant population establishment after range expansion
Project background As both native and exotic species shift their distributions in response to climate warming and through biological invasions, many expand their ranges across elevational gradients. This expansion results in the reassembly of ecological communities, which meditates the effects of climate warming on biodiversity and key ecosystem functions. RangeX is a multidisciplinary, replicated field READ MORE
Two positions available in new FUNDER project
FUNDER got funded! We are excited to start exploring the Direct and indirect climate impacts on the biodiversity and Functioning of the UNDERground ecosystem this spring. To that end, we are now recruiting a PhD and a Postdoctoral research fellow. The PhD position focuses on the roles of alpine soil mesofauna (nematodes, micro-arthropods) and READ MORE
Measuring carbon fluxes on asphalt?
By Joseph Gaudard We were getting some strange looks while measuring ecosystem carbon fluxes on… the parking lot of the university. And for a reason: what would one expect to respire on clean asphalt? Nothing or almost. So what was I doing here, with my whole setup and four students? Well, the most important thing READ MORE
Journeys to the North: We were featured in an ARTE documentary
Just over a year ago, we had the honor to host a camera team of the fantastic French/German tv-channel ARTE, where we were part of a documentary series ‘Journeys to the North‘ (Voyages en terres du Nord) about the wonders of Scandinavia. This episode about Norway features lots of interesting lessons about 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
Data cleaning – finding the problems with turfmapper
All large data sets have problems. The community data gathered in the Between the Fjords projects are no exception – there are inevitable spelling mistakes, synonyms, misidentifications (for example of sterile Carex). Fortunately, having community data from several years, we can compare the community over time to identify and then fix these sorts of problems. READ MORE
Decomposition in alpine grasslands
Our paper on decomposition processes in Norwegian alpine grasslands is just published online in Ecosystems :D. Go check it out! Long-Term Climate Regime Modulates the Impact of Short-Term Climate Variability on decomposition in Alpine Grassland Soils http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10021-018-0241-5
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