Upcoming events:
* March 6-8, 2018 (arrival late on 5th of March). The 7th ForHot annual meeting is planned to take place in Barcelona, Spain. The registration is open and so far 33 participants have notified that they intend to attend the meeting.
Recent news (older news at the bottom of the page):
* Dec 01, 2017. Gunnhildur did the montly sampling for the GN seasonal survey.
* Nov 22-23, 2017. Palli and Bjarni did the fourth forest inventory on 38 measurement plots in the FN forest.
* Nov 1-5, 2017. The second intensive campaign in the GN seasonal survey of ecosystme traits took place. Sara Marañón also did her 15N pulse labelling experiment in the same plots and Gunnhildur pre-processed the samples two weeks later.
* Oct 16-19, 2017. Lucia Fuchslueger and Niel Verbrigghe came and worked on the new TNT ForHot experiment.
* Oct 7, 2017. Johan de Gruyter (PhD student of Erik Verbruggen in Antwerp) has been sequencing protists from a number of soils around the world, including the ForHot GN plots.
* Sep 17-20, 2017. Gunnhildur and Palli did the montly sampling for the GN seasonal survey.
* Aug 21-26, 2017. Lucia Fuchslueger, Jennifer Soong, Christia and Niel Verbrigghe (the new ForHot PhD student in Antwerp) came and worked on the new TNT ForHot experiment.
* Aug 23, 2017. ForHot PAPER: Today the article “Impact of soil warming on the plant metabolome of Icelandic grasslands” by Albert Gargallo-Garriga, Marta Ayala-Roque, Jordi Sardans, Mireia Bartrons, Bjarni D. Sigurdsson, Niki I. W. Leblans, Michal Oravec, Otmar Urban, Ivan A. Janssens and Josep Peñuelas was published on-line in the Metabolites journal.
* Aug 7-11, 2017. Andreas Richter, Philipp Gündler (M.Sc. student from Univ. Vienna), Sara Marañón, Martin Holmstrup, Palli and Gunnhildur started the first intensive campaign in the new GN seasunal surey of ecosystem traits. Sara Marañón also started a 15N pulse labelling experiment at three temperature levels of GN, which will be carried out at the same time as intensive seasonal campaigns.
* July 5-7, 2017. Håkan Wallander and Jing Zang came to the ForHot sites and and retrived Håkan’s mesh-bags after two year incubation at the ForHot Forest (FN) and Grassland sites (GN, GO).
* July 3, 2017. Alice Cosatti , an intership student from BOKU in Vienna, Austria, arrived. She was a research assistant in ForHot and some other projects during the summer.
* June 12-16, 2017. Ivan Janssens, Michael Bahn, Sara Vicca, Erik Verbruggen, Jennifer Soong, Lucia Fuchslueger, Sara Marañón Jiménez, Andreas Richter and Tom Walker visited the ForHot site and started a new field experiment (the TNT experiment: Plant-soil carbon responses to warming and nitrogen) on recently warmed grasslands (GN). Altogether this experiment has 40 permanent research plots with varying soil tempearatures (+0 to +10) and N addition rates (0 to 150 kg N / ha year). Two new PhD students will be hired this autumn in Innsbruch and Antwerp to work on this project.
* June 9, 2017. Julia Bischof, an intership student from the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf Univ. in Germany arrived. She will be a research assistant this summer and do her own research project on regeneration of broadleaf trees in FN.
* June 1, 2017. ForHot PAPER: Today the article “Phenological responses of Icelandic subarctic grasslands to short-term and long-term natural soil warming” by Niki Leblans, Bjarni D Sigurdsson, Sara Vicca, Yongshuo Fu, Josep Penuelas, Ivan Janssens (2017) appeared on-line in the Global Change Biology journal. It will appear on paper in November with the quote: 23(11), 4932-4945. doi: 10.1111/gcb.13749.
* April 24, 2017. Paige Guevarra, an undergraduate biology student from Bates College, USA, started her 5-week internship stay at AUI. She will process and do a morphological analysis on needle/shoot samples from three canopy levels of ca. 50 Sitka spurce trees growing at different soil temperatures in FN.
* April 18, 2017. Pall (the site manager) has now started the biweekly NDVI, soil water content and montly lysimeter sampling from the GN, GO and NT experiments, as well as shoot-, diameter- and root growth and phenology monitoring in FN.
* April 9, 2017. Bjarni took gas samples from geothermal vents located in the area around the FN, GN, GO and NT experiments to determine the background geothermal d13C concentrations.
* Mar 12-15, 2017. The 6th General ForHot Project Meeting took place at Univ. of Vienna, Austria. In total 28 ForHot participants attended and contributed to the meeting. See the meeting minutes under “Meetings”.
* Feb 14, 2017. ForHot PAPER: Today the article “The emissions of N2O and CH4 from natural soil temperature gradients in a volcanic area in southwest Iceland” by Maljanen, M., Yli-Moijala, H., Biasi, C., Leblans, N. I. W., De Boeck, H. J., Bjarnadóttir, B. & Sigurdsson, B.D. was published in the Soil Biology and Biochemistry journal. The full quotation is: 109: 70-80. doi: 10.1016/j.soilbio.2017.01.021
* Jan 27, 2017. EU’s Marie Curie Action funded a 1-year post-doctoral fellowship for Sara Marañón at UAB in Barcelona (June 2017-May 2018). She will do her field research at the ForHot sites in Iceland. The project was entitled: Resilience of Soil Stoichiometry in subartic soils under Temperature Induced Soil Carbon Losses: Where does the N go? (StoiCa)
The ForHot research consortium:
The project was started as a pilot project in autumn 2011 and as a full-scale research project in spring 2013. It is coordinated by the Agricultural University of Iceland. Other participants come from University of Iceland (UI), Icelandic Forest Research (IFR), University of Akureyri (UA) and Icelandic Institute of Natural History (IINH) and various European univerities and reserach intitutes (see a list below). Altogether the research consortium consists of ca. 19 senior scientists and ca. 15 graduate and post-graduate students. See the page “Participants” for further info.
Memorandum of Understanding:
All formal participants of ForHot have adapted a common Memorandum of Understandingabout cooperation, data sharing, publications and co-author issues, etc.. This MoU has been signed by the PI of each university/institute in behalf of his fellow researchers/students.
Local coordination:
One scientist from each of the local institutes/universities has a seat in a Local Coordinating Group:
1) Prof. Bjarni D. Sigurdsson, forest ecophysiologist at AUI (Coordinator)
His CV is found here:
2) Dr. Bryndis Marteinsdottir, plant ecologist at UI
3) Dr. Edda S. Oddsdottir, soil biologist at IFR
4) M.Sc. Asrun Elmarsdottir, plant ecologist at IINH
5) M.Sc. Ulfur Oskarsson, biologist at AUI
6) Dr. Brynhildur Bjarnadottir, forest ecologist at AU
International cooperation:
The Local Coordinating Group has then made bilateral agreements with all international participants on how to cooperate within the framework of ForHot and both parties have signed a MoU.
Austria – Univ. of Vienna – PI: Prof. Andreas Richter – MoU
Austria – BOKU – PI: Dr. Hans Sandén.
Belgium – Univ. of Antwerp – PI: Prof. Ivan Janssens – MoU
Denmark – Aarhus Univ. – PI: Prof. Martin Holmstrup – MoU
Denmark – Univ. Copenhagen – PI: Prof. Per Gundersen – MoU
Estonia – Univ. of Tartu – PI: Dr. Ivika Ostonen – MoU
Finland – Univ. of Eastern Finland – PI: Ass. Prof. Marja Maljanen – MoU
Finland – METLA – PI: Prof. Leena Finér – MoU
Germany – Thünen Inst. of Climate-Smart Agric. – PI: Dr. Christopher Poeplau
Netherlands – VU Univ. Amsterdam – PI: Ass.prof. James Weedon
Netherlands – Univ. Leiden – PI: Ass.prof. Peter van Bodegom – MoU
Poland – Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski Univ. in Warsaw – PI: Dr. Krassimira Ilieva-Makulec – MoU
Spain – Universitat Autònom a de Barcelona (UAB) – PI: Prof. Josep Peñuelas – MoU
Spain – Univ. Granada – PI: Dr. Sara Marañón Jiménez
Sweden – Lund Univ. – PI: Prof. Håkan Wallander – MoU
Sweden – the Swedish Univ. of Agric. Sci. (SLU) – PI: Prof. Thomas Kätterer – MoU
Switzerland – Basel Univ. – PI: Prof Christian Körner – MoU
Policy regarding new ForHot consortium members
The ForHot consortium has an open policy for accepting new participants. Requests should be addressed to the coordinator of ForHot. If the proposed research does not overlap with any ongoing activities the local steering board can accept new participants without further delay. If, however, there are any overlaps in the proposed research with ongoing activities, new participants need to be accepted by the leading participants of the ongoing activity and the Local Coordinating Group.
Funding:
The ongoing work has mostly been funded directly by the univerisities and the research institutes involved (and the researchers themselfs). Other exteral grants linked with the ForHot consortium are listed here below:
- 2017: EU’s Marie Curie Action funded a 1-year post-doctoral fellowship for Sara Marañón at UAB in Barcelona, but where she will do her field research at the ForHot sites in Iceland. The project was entitled: Resilience of Soil Stoichiometry in subartic soils under Temperature Induced Soil Carbon Losses: Where does the N go? (StoiCa)
- 2017: FWO (The Research Foundation of Flanders, Belgium) funded a 3-year collaboration project between Belgium and Austria, where two new PhD students will be hired and where part of their field research will take place at the ForHot Grasslands (GN and GO) in Iceland. The name of the project is: “Plant-soil carbon responses to warming and nitrogen: Plant carbon allocation as a mediator of soil carbon dynamics under warming and increasing nitrogen availability”.
- 2016: The Icelandic Research Fund (IRF, RANNÍS) granted the project 3-year research grant (no 163272-051; Title: “ForHot-Forest: Effects of natural soil warming on the carbon cycle of an Icelandic forest ecosystem”). This enabled the project to hire one full-time PhD student and 50% research assistant in Iceland for the period 2016-2018.
- 2016: ES1308 COST CLIMMANI funded the travel and research work of Dr. Martin Maddison from Univ. of Tartu, Estonia, to work at ForHot during two weeks in August 2016 doing N2 flux measurements. This is a European research network project funded by the Horizon 2020 (2014-2018)
- 2015: ES1308 COST CLIMMANI funded the travel and research work of Dr. Hans de Boeck at ForHot during two weeks in February 2015. This is a European research network project funded by the Horizon 2020 (2014-2018)
- 2014-2018: University of Antwerp funded another full 4-year PhD position (Sept 2014-Sept 2018) and Steven Dauwe was hired and is registered with joint PhD student at UU and AUI.
- 2014: The Danish Research Council funded a study by prof. Martin Holmstrup at Aarhus Univ. on soil fauna at the ForHot sites.
- 2014: The Lorentz Institute in the Netherlands funded a For-Hot workshop entitled: “Joint Ecosystem Assessment of Warming Impacts”. It will take place during February 10-14 in Leiden in the Netherlands.
- 2013: Icelandic Student Unenployment Fund funded a minimum salary for hiring a M.Sc. student, Elin Gudmundsdottir, for a 2 month summer job in 2013.
- 2012-2016: FWO (The Research Foundation of Flanders, Belgium) funded a full 4-year PhD position (Sept 2012-Sept 2016) and Niki Leblans was hired and is registered with joint PhD at UU and AUI.
- 2012: RANNÍS Infrastructure Fund (Tækjasjóður RANNÍS) funded installation of new research equipment in 2012. This includes automated soil temperature sensors, mini-rhyzotrons, dendrometers, a portable gas-exchange system, etc. Most of the equipment were already initiated during the pilot project phase (2012), even if most of it is only used during few campaigns.
The internatonal cooperation within ForHot has mainly come through two research networks, to which ForHot belongs formally:
- 2011-2014: FSC-SINK (Forest Soil Carbon Sink Nordic Network). This is a Nordic research network with the aim of integrate interdisciplinary research dealing with impacts of environmental change on soil organic carbon. It has funded some of the infrastructure at the ForHot sites.
- 2011-2018: CLIMMANI (Climate Change – Manipulation Experiments in Terrestrial Ecosystems). This is a European research network project funded by the European Science Foundation (2009-2013) and COST (2014-2018). It has funded the travel and work of number of PhD students and scientists at the ForHot site in Iceland in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Older News (Most recent news are found at the top of the page):
* Dec 8, 2016. A new ForHot-related project got funded! Univ. of Antwerp (PI: Ivan Janssens) and Univ. of Innsbruck (PI: Micael Bahn) got a new 3-year project funded, where part of the field research will take place at the ForHot Grasslands (GN and GO) in Iceland. The name of the project is: “Plant-soil carbon responses to warming and nitrogen: Plant carbon allocation as a mediator of soil carbon dynamics under warming and increasing nitrogen availability”.
* Nov 14, 2016. Niki I. W. Leblans defended her joint PhD thesis at Icel. Agric. Univ. and Univ. Antwerp. A ForHot project meeting took place in Reykjavik, Iceland.
* Oct 12, 2016. Dr. Krassimira Ilieva-Makulec from Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University, Warshaw, Poland, came with her colleagues and sampled FN, GN and GO again for further studies on changes in soil microfauna.
* Sept 12-16, 2016. Dr. Ivika Ostonen from Univ. of Tartu, Estonia, came and made field measurements of root exudation along the warming gradients in FN. Both Edda S. Oddsdottir and Pall Sigurdsson collaborated with Ivika.
* Sept 5, 2016. Anna Theresa Edlinger successfully defended her M.Sc. thesis from ForHot entitled “Changes of belowground processes of the carbon and nitrogen cycle in response to soil warming. Will global warming increase the turnover of soil C and N above plant demands and lead to increased leaching losses?” from Copenhagen University and BOKU.
* Sept 1, 2016. ForHot PAPER: A paper from ForHot has now been accepted in the journal Global Change Biology: “Poeplau, Christopher, Kätterer, Thomas, Leblans, Niki I. W., & Sigurdsson, Bjarni D. (2016). Sensitivity of soil carbon fractions and their specific stabilisation mechanisms to extreme soil warming in a subarctic grassland. Global Change Biology. doi:10.1111/gcb.13491”.
* Aug 15, 2016. A new PhD student started his work at AUI which will mostly focus on FN. His name is Pall Sigurdsson and he is from Iceland.
* Aug 11-14, 2016. Dr. Martin Maddison from Univ. of Tartu, Estonia, came and took samples from FN, GN and GO for N2 emission measurements.
* July 20 – Aug 5, 2016. Steven Dauwe, Dr. Jennifer Soong, Dr. Cindy De Jonge, Mattias Janssens and Elien de Schutter from Univ. of Antwerp did a 13C pulse-labelling campaign in the GN experment. Cindy also took soil samples at GO and GN for soil lipid analysis.
* July 13-17, 2016. Prof. Håkan Wallander from Lund Univ. came with a crew and retrived his mesh-bags after one year incubation at the ForHot Forest (FN) and Grassland sites (GN, GO).
* July 10-17, 2016. Dr. Marja Maljanen from Univ. of Eastern Finland came and did CH4/N2O/CH4 flux measurements at GN, GO and FN. She also took soil samples in FN for dr. Hans Göransson at BOKU in Vienna, but he was going to make some enzyme activity measurements.
* July 10, 2016. 42 PhD students and teachers taking part in the ABS summer school “ABS Course: Effects of climate change on Arctic ecosystems and societies 2016” visited the ForHot research sites and got introduced to the research there by Steven Dauwe and Bjarni. One student group used some CO2 flux data from ForHot for their final assignment in the course.
* June 30 – July 11, 2016. The PhD student Steven Dauwe came to Iceland and worked on this N-addition and soil warming experimental plots at GN.
* June 5, 2016. Dr. Bryndis Marteinsdottir has initiated a M.Sc. project on the ForHot grasslands (GN and GO) with a student at Univ. Iceland, where they study effects of soil warming on plant reproduction, phenology and fitness.
* May 1, 2016. B.Sc. Gunnhildur E. G. Gunnarsdottir started as a 50% research assistant at the ForHot sites, she will be the Site Manager this summer.
* Apr 28 – May 8, 2016. Anna Theresa Edlinger, a M.Sc. student from prof. Per Gundersen Copenhagen Univ., did a sampling campaign at FN of soil lysates and 15N.
* Apr 10, 2016. The PhD student Steven Dauwe came to Iceland and will stay for 4 weeks this time working on his N-addtion and soil warming grassland experiments.
* Mar 30, 2016. Icelandic Research Council (RANNIS) granted the project 3-year research grant that will enable the project to hire a PhD student and 50% research assistant in Iceland.
* Mar 8-10, 2016. The 5th general project meeting was held in Antwerp in Belgium. Participatns are 28.
* Dec 10, 2015. Dr. Bryndis Marteinsdottir has joined the ForHot consortium as a full participant. She will do research on plant phenology and fitness in 2016.
* Nov 9, 2015. The PhD student Steven Dauwe left Iceland after his forth intensive field campaign this year.
* Nov 5. 2015. The PhD student Niki Leblans left Iceland after having been site manager since early March.
* Oct 17-20, 2015. Dr. Martin Holmstrup sampled soil fauna at the sites.
* Aug 31, 2015. Today we sent in an application to the Icelandic Research Council (RANNÍS) for a new “Icelandic” PhD position which would focus on the C-fluxes and modelling of the ForHot-Forest soil temperature gradient. The application also contained some base-funding request for repeating ForHot workshops, similar to the one we had in Leiden, the Netherlands, in Feb 2014.
* Aug 9-16, 2015. Dr. Sara Marañón Jiménez came for a second soil sampling campaign in the ForHot-Grassland sites (GN and GO) and subsequently did a second incubation study on the soil at the labs of Univ. Antwerp.
* Aug 1, 2015. The third M.Sc. student from Univ. Antwerp, Dajana Radujkovic, came and stayed for two weeks to sample soil from GN, GO and the ForHot N-addition experiment for soil microbe DNA analysis.
*Jul 27-Aug 1, 2015. Prof. Josep Peñuelas Reixach and dr. Jordi Sardans from the Global Ecology Unit of the Universitat Autònom a de Barcelona (UAB), Spain, and did a soil and plant sampling campaign in the ForHot-Grassland sites (GN and GO) for analysis the impact of soil warning on metabolic state biomarkers and metabolomics.
* Jul 20, 2015. Two M.Sc. students from Univ. Antwerp, Vendelin Meynzer and Stephanie Van Loock came and did their thesis work on vegetation communities and NPP dynamics at the ForHot-Grassland sites (GN and GO) and within the N-addition experiment of Steven Dauwe. They stayed until middle of August.
*Jul 17-19, 2015. Prof. Andreas Richter and dr. Tom Walker from Department of Microbiology and Ecosystem Science, University of Vienna, came and did soil sampling to measure carbon and nutrient use efficiency of microbial communities along the temperature gradients in the ForHot-Grassland sites (GN and GO).
* Jul 8-13, 2015. Dr. Sara Marañón Jiménez, a post doc from Ivan Janssen’s group in Univ. Antwerp, came for sampling soil along the temperature gradients in the ForHot-Grassland sites (GN and GO), which she used subsequently for an incubation study at the labs of Univ. Antwerp in Belgium.
* Jul 18, 2015. The PhD student Steven Dauwe came to Iceland and will stay for 5 weeks this time.
* Jun 14-17, 2015. Professor Håkan Wallander and the post-doc dr. Zhanfeng Liu from the Microbial Ecology group at Lund Univ. retrived their mesh-bags after one year incubation and installed new bags at the ForHot Forest (FN) and Grassland sites (GN, GO).
*Jun 08, 2015. The soil scientist, prof. Andreas Richter from the Univ. of Vienna, Austria, has joined the ForHot consortium as a full participant. He and his group will do research on carbon and nutrient use of microbial communities in cooperation with other ForHot groups.
*April 21, 2015. prof. Josep at Universitat Autònom a de Barcelona, Spain, has joined the ForHot consortium as a full participant. He and his group will do research on metabolic state biomarkers and metabolomic analysis in cooperation with Ivan Janssens at Univ. of Antwerp.
* April 21, 2015. The 4th general project meeting was held in Iceland. See minutes under “Meetings”. Now the total number of researchers and postdoc s that have been involved with the ForHot consortium from the beginning in 2011 is 25 and in total 14 BSc, MSc and PhD students have done some work within the project.
* April 5, 2015. The PhD student Steven Dauwe came to Iceland and will stay for 5 weeks this time. His PhD study adds N-enrichment treatments to the soil temperature gradients in the recently warmed grasslands.
* March 7, 2015. The PhD student Niki Leblans came to Iceland and will stay until November. She will be the site manager this summer.
* Feb. 12-24, 2015. Dr. Hans de Boeck from Univ. of Antwerp, Belgium, came and conducted a winter campaign on CO2, N2O and CH4 fluxes at GN (recently warmed grasslands) in cooperation with Marja Maljanen, Brynhildur Bjarnadottir and Bjarni D. Sigurdsson.
* Dec 15-18, 2014. Dr. Christopher Poeplau from SLU, Uppsala, Sweden, came for taking soil samples from all plots at GN (recently warmed grasslands) for SOM fractination.
*Dec 10, 2014. The soil scientist, prof. Thomas Kätterer, from the Swedish Univ. of Agricultural Sciences has joined the ForHot consortium as a full participant. He and his group will do research on soil organic matter fractionation in cooperation with Ivan Janssens at Univ. of Antwerp and Håkan Wallander at Lund Univ.
* October 15, 2014. A new joint PhD student between Univ. of Antwerp and Agric. Univ. Iceland, Steven Dauwe, came and spent one month preparing a new N-addition experiment which will be installed at GN next spring.
* October 5, 2014. Zdenek Gavor, a technician from prof. Martin Holmstrup at Aaruhus Univ. came and took additional soil fauna samples as well as extra samples for earthworm studies.
* September 9, 2014. prof. Martin Holmstrup came and took samples for studying the effect of soil warming on soil fauna (collmembolas and mites) in all the three ForHot ecosystems (FN, GN and GO).
* September, 29, 2014. prof. Per Gundersen from the Univ. of Copenhagen, came together with two technicians and installed suction cups at all three ecosystems for studying effects of soil wariming on DOC fluxes.
* August 12, 2014. Anne Dalebeler, a post-doc at Univ. of Vienna, came and sampled the transects at the long-term warmed grassland (GO) for nitrate oxidizing bacteria.
* July 2, 2014. Damiano Cilio, a graduate student from Univ. of Florence, Italy, spent two months working as a research assistant at the ForHot site. He also made his graduate thesis on the effects of soil warming on tree phenolgy at the FN-forest site.
* June 2, 2014. Benjamin Hearn, a M.Sc. student from UV Univ. Antwerpen, came for one month stay to do his thesis-work. He will measure root and shoot respiration, N-status and TNC status of the spruce trees.
* June 1, 2014. We sent in an application to the Icelandic Research Fund, asking for funding for one Icelandic PhD student (root biology) and one M.Sc. student for ForHot.
* May x, 2014. The finnish M.Sc. student, Heli Yli-Moijala, from Univ. of Eastern Finland, came and stayed for two weeks measuring N2O and CH4 fluxes.
* April 9, 2014. It was decided at the workshop in the Netherlands to send in a ITN-ETN application entitled “Joint Assessment of Warming Impacts on Subarctic Ecosystems (JAWS)”, where we ask for funding for establishing a PhD training network, based on the FORHOT concepts.
* April 8, 2014. Two graduate students from SLU in Sweden, Hanna André and Agnes Bondesson, came and stayed for two months. They did their thesis-work on soil respiration and shoot photosynthesis in the spruce forest.
* April 4, 2014. The PhD student Niki Leblans came to Iceland and will stay until November. She will be the site manager this summer.
*Feb 10-14, 2014. The Lorentz Institute in the Netherlands has funded a ForHot workshop entitled: “Joint Ecosystem Assessment of Warming Impacts”, where senior researchers and PhD students doing research within the ForHot project will meet and work together on common publications in international journals. All participants are encouraged to take part in this event.
*October 18, 2013. The soil biologist, prof. Morten Holmstrup, from Aarhus Univ. in Denmark has joined the ForHot consortium as a full participant. He will do research on soil fauna in 2014 in collaboration with Edda S. Oddsdottir and Krassimira Ilieva-Makulec.
* September 14-17, 2013. Ivika Osonen and her PhD student, Kaarin Parts, worked at the ForHot forest site with Edda and Bjarni. They took samples for morphological study of ectomycorrhiza on Sitka spruce roots.
* May 15 – August 30, 2013. The M.Sc. student Elin Gudmundsdottir was hired as a site manager for the ForHot project, with funding from the “the Icelandic Student Unemployment Fund” and FSC-Sink.
* June-July 2013. The graduate student, Heli Yli-Moijala, spent six weeks making CH4, N2O and CO2 flux measurements in all three ecosystems across the soil-temperature gradients. She was sent by Dr. Marja Maljanen from University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio.
* June-August, 2013. The postdoc, Dr. Freja Dreesen and two M.Sc. students, Katherine Vande Velde and Lieven Michielsen, from Univ. of Antwerp did research on: a) morphological, chemical and physiological changes (plant traits) in key plant species, and b) responses in ground-vegetation biomass, R/S ratios and soil nutrient contents in all three ecosystems across the soil-temperature gradients.
* May 31, 2013. The ForHot sent today in an application to Rannsóknasjóður Rannís for base funding for running the project in 2014-2016.
* May 30, 2013. Dr. Ivika Ostonen from University of Tartu, Estonia, visited the ForHot site with Edda S. Oddsdottir and made plans for measurements of mycohrryza morphology in coming October.
* May 26, 2013. Dr. Marja Maljanen came with her student, Heli Yli-Moijala, to start regular measurements of CH4 and N2O fluxes at six locations in each of the three ecosystems. Heli will stay in Iceland until July 12 for doing these measurements.
* May 22-23, 2013. Prof. Håkan Wallander, Firoz Shah and Magnus Ellström from the Microbial Ecology group at Lund Univ. retrived their mesh-bags after one year incubation and installed new bags. They also atteded a FSC-Sink project workmeeting and a small conference that took place in Hveragerd 22-25 May.
* May 15-17, 2013. Dr. Krassimira Ilieva-Makulec from the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, Poland, took samples for measuring soil animal (nematodes) density and community assemblages in all the 75 permenent plots, as well as in the hottest areas where soil temperature at 10 cm depth is ca. 55 °C. This work was funded by the ESF project ClimMani.
* May 13, 2013. Elin Gudmundsdottir started today, but she will be a site manager at ForHot this summer, with salary funding from “Vinnumálastofnun”.
* May 10, 2013. Dr. Peter van Bodegom sent in an application to the Lorentz center in Holland for funding a ForHot workshop which would take place in Holland in November 2013.
* April 1, 2013. Niki Leblans, the PhD student from Univ. of Antwerp and UAI came from Belgium and started her doctoral research at the ForHot sites on the C,N,P cycles. She will stay until November.
* March 27, 2013. The 2nd general project meeting was held in Iceland. Now 15 senior researchers and 10 post-graduate students are involved with the ForHot project even if the project has no central funding.
* December 18, 2012. Automated soil temperature sensors were read and the first full year of data was looked at.
* October 19, 2012. Edda S. Oddsdottir ended the litter-bag study where spruce needles were incubated at different soil temperatures in the forest. The decomposition constant increased by 100% with 2 °C increase in temperature.
* October 16, 2012. Niki Leblans, a new joint PhD student between Univ. of Antwerp and Agric. Univ. of Iceland will spend the next three weeks at the sites, preparing her fieldwork on effects of soil temperature on C, N and P cycles in both forest and grasslands during 2013-2015.
* August 20, 2012. Second campaign of measuring CH4 and N2O fluxes was done by Bjarni D. Sigurdsson. Samples analysed by Marja Maljanen in Finland.
* July 25, 2012. The M.Sc. student Elín Guðmundsdóttir started her fieldwork on changes in vascular- and non-vascular plant communities on both forest and grassland temperature gradients.
* June 5, 2012. Twelve automated chamber systems measuring soil respiration, air and soil temperature and soil water content were initiated on both forest and grassland temperature gradients.
* May 31, 2012. The ForHot sent today in an application to Rannsóknasjóður Rannís for base funding for running the project in 2013-2015.
* May 28, 2012. Marja Maljanen from Univ. of Eastern Finland came and spent a week measuring CH4 and N2O fluxes at both the ForHot study sites.
* May 24, 2012. Håkan Wallander, Magnus Ellström, Firoz Shah and Stephanie Reischke came from the Microbial Ecology group at Lund University, Sweden, and spent some days taking samples for DNA analysis of soil bacteria and fungi, as well as installing mesh-bags with C4-plant material for isotopic study to estimate ectomycorrhizal production in the soil. They came through the FSC-Sink Nordic Network.
* May 16, 2012. ForHot got a infrastructure funding from Icel. Res. Council today. This will enable us to start more measurements at both sites.
* May 10, 2012. James T. Weedon from VU Univ. Amsterdam is now working at the ForHot sites. He got funding from ESF for staying with us for two weeks. He is taking soil samples from both study sites to study the community composition of soil microbes, using pyrosequencing techniques.