Current Research
A big part of my time is now spent on setting up two major, high-tech experiments. One involves an all new open-air system that allows warming (with infrared heaters) and precipitation control (with automated rainout shelters) which is undergoing final tests - the other one is building a 'mesocosm Ecotron', i.e. fully-controlled sunlit enclosures with many automated measurements (e.g. CO2 and H2O fluxes, microclimate, etc.), to be completed in 2020. These are being contructed in the frame of AnaEE-Flanders, and will be embedded in AnaEE-Europe (a European scale infrastructure network on the ESFRI roadmap). More information on AnaEE can be found here: www.anaee.com
Aside from that, I spend time doing research related to AnaEE topics. This ranges from the influence of soil heterogeneity on ecosystem functioning to optimising climate manipulation designs. Alpine ecology also still intrigues me quite a lot.
I am involved in several international networks, ClimMani Cost action (on climate manipulation), SIGNAL (on drought and biodiversity, recently ended) and AnaEE. I also nurture ad-hoc collaborations with colleagues from France, Switzerland, Germany, USA, etc., which often arose from earlier netwerking activities.