Timo Conradi

Congratulations, Jonathan! That's well-deserved!

Global change research in the observational era

Leuzinger and Medlyn

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🥳 ...and again, splendid national and international rankings for ecology, environmental and earth sciences @unibayreuth.bsky.social.
Well done, all colleagues @bayceer.bsky.social 👍🌍

🌿 Calling peatland folks!
I’m compiling a global list of bog-specialist / indicator plant species (vascular plants + bryophytes) for my postdoc on bog niche modelling. I’m especially looking for knowledge from the Southern Hemisphere. If you are interested in collaborating, please DM or reply 🌱

Postdoctoral Fellow in Landscape Ecology Department of Physical Geography is one of the major departments within the Faculty of Science. The department has approximately 100 employees and educates approximately 1 000 students annually. Our r

#Postdoc in #landscape ecology with me
How does plant species traits influence communities responce to environmental change? An unique re-survey data set from the UK will be used to explore & test hypotheses about dispersal and persistence 🧪🌍
Apply 30th of November
su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Sounds like a really cool project 👇

Our new IAVS Bulletin is out! 🌿
Featuring:
• 33rd European Vegetation Survey highlights
• 🌟 Laudatio for Prof. John Rodwell, first honorary EVS member
• 🕊️ In memoriam: Sandro Pignatti (1930–2025)
• 🗺️ EVA-MAP: New tool to explore Vegetation data
Read the full bulletin here👉 tinyurl.com/3jz3cnse

the two vignettes are hidden in the tar.gz that you can download from CRAN. Then go to TTR.PGM/inst/doc 3/3

TTR.PGM: An R package for modelling the distributions and dynamics of plants using the Thornley transport resistance plant growth model An ability to predict the ranges and dynamics of species is central to ecological and evolutionary research. Despite species range modelling being an active area of research for the past three to ...

if you are interested in using the process model for attribution or species distribution modelling, check out our R package: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 2/3

Shifts in vegetation activity of terrestrial ecosystems attributable to climate trends - Nature Geoscience An analysis fusing satellite data with a process-based model of plant growth attributes changes in vegetation activity across terrestrial ecosystems to climatic changes.

Attribution of vegetation change to climate change: here we compared vegetation time series to simulations from a process model forced with observed and counterfactual (detrended) climate data. Trends in climate necessary for the model to emulate vegetation trends www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/3

Want to do vegetation ecology in Taiwan? I am still searching for postdocs, so if interested, check the ad below and apply!

We focus on ecological drivers of cloud & monsoon forests in mountains and how to explain them using plant functional traits.

davidzeleny.net/veglab/

If you are interested in process-based species distribution and plant growth modelling, check out this new R package and paper! besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Postdoc call in Mechanistic Biodiversity Modelling (up to 6 ya) at my lab @unibonn.bsky.social. We focus on modelling terrestrial plant communities, island biogeography, range dynamics, eco-evolutionary feedbacks, diversity gradients, tropical forests, vascular epiphytes. Pls rt! shorturl.at/CL1ny

Congratulations Jens! Truly deserved!

another very useful finding of this study imo is that process models parametrized inversely from species distribution data performed better than forward-parametrized process models, at least in this set of species with reasonable distribution data.

One week left to apply!

Job advertisement: University of Bayreuth Research Associate (m/f/d) for modelling the climatic cultivation risk for tree species in Bavaria under climate change

I am hiring a species distribution modeller to compare model projections of climate-change risks for tree species using physiology-based versus correlative SDMs! Get in touch if you are interested. www.uni-bayreuth.de/job-vacancy-...

Okay ;) but if there IS a ‚correct‘ state and we fail to recognize it, as has been the case in the forest-savanna-bistability assertion, then we make badly informed management decisions.

Reassessing the alternative ecosystem states proposition in the African savanna‐forest domain Ecologists are being challenged to predict how ecosystems will respond to climate changes. According to the Multi-Colored World (MCW) hypothesis, climate impacts may not manifest because consumers su...

forgot this review: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Limited climatic space for alternative ecosystem states in Africa Field observations show that the distribution of African forest and savanna are highly predictable based on climate.

References (first 4 forest-savanna, last one lakes):
Higgins 2023: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Mattos 2023: www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
Williamson 2024: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
Zwaan 2024: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
Davidson 2023 Lakes: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

whereas shorter time series suggest alternative biomass states are possible. I agree that the definition of desired ecosystem states is often debatable, but the use of alternative stable states theory to justify goals is problematic when alternative states are only apparent but not true. 7/7

A similar problem occurs when the observation time span in experiments is too short to allow deterministic end points to be reached. For example, when the monitoring time series of phytoplankton biomass is extended, it turns out that phytoplankton is linearly related to nutrient concentrations 6/7

A string of recent works shows that when these factors are considered and better data is used, the remaining overlap between forest and savannas is minimal, refuting the hypothesis of widespread bistability and pointing to a predictable endpoint in this system. I include some references below. 5/7

such as growing season length and intensity or topography-driven variation in soil hydrology. 4/7

The graph from the Pausas and Bond paper you posted is an example: It shows overlap along one variable (annual rainfall), but most people would agree that the distribution of forest and savannas is also influenced by other environmental factors 3/7

The problem is that we often misinterpret prediction uncertainty in ecological models as evidence for overlapping environmental conditions between two or more ecosystem states, when in fact this uncertainty can be greatly reduced by better models and data. 2/7

I would partly disagree. The evidence for multiple stable states is often not robust enough to use this framework for prescribing management actions. 1/7

🌟PhD Opportunity at @econovoau.bsky.social 🌟
We're looking for a motivated PhD candidate to join an exciting project on forecasting the spread of novel ecosystems under different environmental scenarios. 🌍
📌 **Deadline**: 1 February 2025
🔗 Apply now: bit.ly/3ZMF5pv
#PhD #Ecology #Modelling

Thank you!

Oh cool, could you add me please?