Past research
Second term post-doctoral project work (2011-2014)
The focus of my research was, as in the first three years of post-doctoral work, on the impact of climatic extremes on plants. At the same time, I was also involved in projects that deal with biodiversity - ecosystem functioning issues (such as in SIGNAL, a pan-European project on species richness, invasion, management practices and intraspecific variation).
From 2012-2014, the following experiments were conducted:
1) A first experiment was carried out on artificially composed grassland communities, subjected to either drought or drought and heat in the field, using infrared lamps and/or rainout shelters. Communities consisted of 1, 2 or 6 species, belonging to 2 functional groups (grasses and N-fixers). Furthermore, half of the species was thought to be fairly drought resistant, while the other half was not (based on Ellenberg indicator values). The main research questions were whether biodiversity (here: species richness) 'protects' against climate extremes or not (diversity-stability/insurance hypotheses) and how important the role of community composition is. This experiment ran for 3 years, with also studies into recolonisation, memory effects, etc.
2) A second set of experiment also investigated effects of extreme events, but in established grasslands. We studied both temperate grasslands and alpine grasslands, as we wanted to test whether the responses differ because of the perceived differences between these two types of grassland (for example because competitive interactions are thought to differ between both systems).
Digging out monoliths at AlpFor research station (2440 m a.s.l.) for a translocation experiment
First term post-doctoral project work (2008-2011)
The impact of climatic extremes - specifically heat and drought - on plants
Main research questions were:
-1- What is the separate and the combined influence of heat and drought extremes on grassland communities, and how do the responses differ seasonally?
-2- How do plants respond to a climate with multiple periods of exceptional heat and/or drought in the same year, and how important is the time (recovery period) between such repeated extremes?
-3- How important are 'after-effects' of climate extremes? Do negative impacts persist? What changes in composition & species richness occur the year(s) after a significant extreme event?
Use of infrared lamps to create heat waves
PhD thesis (2003-2007)
Community-scale effects of climate warming on experimental grasslands of different species richness
Climate controlled greenhouses