Pieter De Frenne

Allometric equations underestimate woody volumes of large solitary trees outside forests #LSTOFs 🌳

We used terrestrial lidar scanning #TLS & scanned 215 #LSTOFs along rural to urban gradients across 9 🇪🇺 cities to assess their woody volumes 🧪🌐🍁

Below is one #LSTOF near Amiens 🇨🇵

shorturl.at/hEzfv

Very proud to show the results and some beautiful pictures of @nerdland.be festival! What a rollercoaster !

The Oooh's and Aaaah's and Wauw's of so many when looking through the 🔬 or at small soil critters made this so worth it. Just wonderful!

#citizenscience #burgerwetenschap #nerdlandfestival

We monitored air 🌡 & vapour pressure deficits below the crown of >200 large solitary trees #LSTs 🌳 along rural-to-urban gradients for 3 tree species (oak, ash, and lime) across 9 European cities 🏫 We found that #LSTs shape their own species-specific microclimate to host 🐝🦋🐿🦇🌾☘️🌻🌼

shorturl.at/3xPRd

#CoolTree project on the benefits of large solitary trees #LSTs & trees outside forests #TOFs in rural & urban landscapes: cultural heritage values, regulating services & local refugia

@pieterdefrenne.bsky.social
@kvanmeerbeek.bsky.social
@karen-depauw.bsky.social
@fspicher.bsky.social

🌐🌍🍁

The #biosphere is changing: Check our global mapping of ecological novelty in wild #ecosystems (due to #climatechange, #defaunation & floristic disruption) - just out in @natureecoevo.bsky.social ♨️🐘🌿🌐 Big thx to @mattkerr.bsky.social for the huge effort! #novelecosystems #invasivespecies #megafauna

ForNaLab wins the Sustainability Research Award Rudi Verheyen 2024! FNL was selected by a jury for its work on 'Forest conservation and restoration in a changing world'. Kris Verheyen, Lander Baeten, @pieterdefrenne.bsky.social & Jan Mertens received the price & gave an inspiring talk together.

Disequilibrium in plant distributions: Challenges and approaches for species distribution models Plant distributions are often in disequilibrium with climate, not occupying all suitable habitat and present in conditions that no longer support long-term population persistence. This proves a chall...

Disequilibrium in plant distributions: Challenges and approaches for species distribution models - check our new review in @journalofecology.bsky.social doi.org/10.1111/1365... 🍃🌦️♨️🌿 #SDM #plants #speciesdistributions #ranges

Tracking hidden dimensions of plant biogeography from herbaria Plants are diverse, but investigating their ecology and evolution in nature across geographic and temporal scales to predict how species will respond to global change is challenging. With their geogr...

Amazing #Tansley #Review from Barnabas Daru on harnessing #herbarium data 🌿🌾☘🌸 to track hidden dimensions of plant biogeography, including plant redistribution: #species #range #shifts ⬇️

@newphyt.bsky.social

shorturl.at/7epYs

The past few years have seen the publication of many new trait databases. A common problem with large databases is a lack of completeness, or inversely, the high prevalence of missing values. Biologists have developed several methods to impute (fill in) missing values. This allows ordinary statistical procedures to be used in analyses and the use of only complete cases, with a concomitant loss of power and accuracy, can be avoided. Often, biologists use simulation to test new methods by deleting values from a dataset and recording how well the imputed values match the known, removed values. Here we argue that this is a poor measure of the strength of an imputation method. We also describe the importance and logic of the statistical procedure of multiple imputation, which requires that the imputations need not be precise or accurate estimates of the missing data.

The fallacy of single imputation for #traits databases: Use multiple imputation instead @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social #ecopubs

doi.org/10.1111/2041...

Check out our new blog post to find out more about the article 'Ten practical guidelines for microclimate research in terrestrial ecosystems' by @pieterdefrenne.bsky.social and team! 🌎 🧪

Read the blog here 👉 https://buff.ly/4h32ybX

Local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity in two forest understorey herbs in response to forest management intensity This study explores how forest management, and the underlying environmental variables impacts local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity in two understorey

📢 New publication!!
Recently, I finally got to publish the last chapter from my PhD 🌿
We used a reciprocal transplant along a gradient of forest management intensity to study local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity - read more below:
academic.oup.com/aobpla/artic...

📯🌲| The last article from my thesis is now out in @peercomjournal.bsky.social !
We tackled how the different drivers of forest temperature determine plant communities. We found that shaded valley bottoms harbor 5 (30%) more cold-adapted species! doi.org/10.24072/pcj.... Will it lead to microrefugia?

A stock image of a ginkgo tree. They’ve lived through the ice age, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and brushed off an atomic blast just a mile away. Here’s the story of this living fossil that refuses to age—or die.

Ancient ginkgo trees, some over 600 years old, show no signs of aging, maintaining vitality similar to younger trees. A study shows that their stem cells and immune defenses remain robust over centuries, explaining their extraordinary lifespans. In @forbes.com: www.forbes.com/sites/scottt...

Dead vines in the region around Los Andes in the western catchment area of Aconcagua, a region that has been particularly hard hit by the ongoing drought in Chile. Photo: Dirk Karger, WSL

More frequent, more intense, affecting larger areas: over the last 40 years, mega-droughts have become more severe and are increasingly damaging ecosystems. This is shown by a study led by the WSL and published in @science.org www.wsl.ch/en/news/mega... @dirknkarger.bsky.social
📷 Dirk Karger 🌐

Nutrient fertilization by dogs in peri‐urban ecosystems Dogs are an underestimated source of nutrient fertilizer and can bring in 11 kg N and 5 kg P per ha per year. Their impact in sensitive ecosystems with plants adapted to nutrient-poor conditions can ....

Another reason for dogs to be kept on the path - in addition to their potential substantial nitrogen and phosphorus inputs

@aer-ese-bes.bsky.social @britishecolsoc.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1002/2688...

Dogs walked off-lead cause 20% more disturbance to protected lowland heaths - British Ecological Society Resarch reveals how dogs walked off-lead access more areas of protected lowland heaths, causing more disturbance to rare ground nesting birds.

"Dogs walked off-lead access more areas of protected lowland heaths, causing more disturbance to rare ground nesting birds."

www.britishecologicalsociety.org/dogs-walked-...

@britishecolsoc.bsky.social @aer-ese-bes.bsky.social

From Prototype to Reality: Moving Beyond the Technology Hype in Ecological Research Click on the article title to read more.

New reflection paper by Eline Lorer & Dries Landuyt: ‘From Prototype to Reality: Moving Beyond the Technology Hype in Ecological Research’.

A reflection on their sensor development trajectory

@The Bulletin @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1002/bes2....

#ecology #microclimate #sensor

Hej Bluesky!
We are ForNaLab:
🌼 a team of researchers passionate about Forest & Nature at Ghent university
📈 scientists delving deep into fundamental and applied questions

We will be posting here on
🔭 the process of doing science
✨ new research results

stay tuned! 🎉

In the latest NatuurFocus, we present this framework, developed for Aelmoeseneiebos, our research forest with high scientific and ecological value. The goal: inspire scientists & nature managers to adopt similar practices & strengthen dialogue to protect nature during research.

Field experiments in natural areas are crucial to study environmental change but can pose risks to these ecosystems and their species. To minimize impacts, we propose a careful framework in NatuurFocus to balance potential damage against scientific value.

📸 by @habenblondeel.bsky.social

No winter halt in below-ground wood growth of four angiosperm deciduous tree species - Nature Ecology & Evolution As wood growth in deciduous tree stems halts during winter, it has been assumed that wood growth in coarse roots follows the same pattern. This study on the growth of stem and coarse roots of four Eur...

#oneforjournalclub

Woody growth of coarse roots of deciduous trees continues throughout the winter!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Latitudinal gradients in air density create invisible topography at sea level, affecting animal flight costs Air density affects the costs of animal flight. This is well-established for flight at high altitude. Shepard et al. show that changes in air density cause regional differences in flight costs at sea level due to latitudinal temperature gradients. They discuss the implications for species distributions and for global change.

@currentbiology.bsky.social does it again!

Our environments are considerably more complex than we typically think. Is it really so surprising that there are broad swaths of biology we don't even know about, let alone don't know how to interpret?

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Starting out doing microclimate research? Then worth a read of our new OA paper

Can botanical gardens and arboreta teach us about the impacts of climate change?
Here a multi-garden community science study finds spring wildflowers shorten phenophases in the face of unusually warm temperatures. #HoldenScience
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Ten practical guidelines for microclimate research in terrestrial ecosystems Most biodiversity dynamics and ecosystem processes on land take place in microclimates that are decoupled from the climate as measured by standardised weather stations in open, unshaded locations....

New Paper Alert! 🚨
📄 "Ten practical guidelines for microclimate research in terrestrial ecosystems" is out now in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social @mebnetwork.bsky.social

🔗 Read it here: doi.org/10.1111/2041...

A 🧵 with key takeaways (1/5)

Ten practical guidelines for #microclimate research in terrestrial ecosystems

doi.org/10.1111/2041...

from #SoilTemp core group, lead by @pieterdefrenne.bsky.social

Everything you ever wanted to know to get started on #microclimate is compiled there ⬇️ in 🔟 guidelines 🤓 Unpack each 1️⃣ to select the right variable, the most relevant spatiotemporal scale, the best sampling design & to tailor your analyses to your study question

🧪🌐🍁

shorturl.at/VYP8f

Interested in more of this type of work? Follow the microclimate ecology starter park with all these great people inside!
go.bsky.app/7at8uFX

10 microclimate guidelines, a paper led by @pieterdefrenne.bsky.social to which I also contributed to, is just published!

It was a great experience as the most of the idea generating and also a lot of writing was done in a collaborative workshop.

Ten practical guidelines for microclimate research in terrestrial ecosystems Most biodiversity dynamics and ecosystem processes on land take place in microclimates that are decoupled from the climate as measured by standardised weather stations in open, unshaded locations....

*Ten practical guidelines for microclimate research in terrestrial ecosystems*

I am so glad to share our latest paper in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social led by @pieterdefrenne.bsky.social and the @mebnetwork.bsky.social.

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...