2023 in a nutshell

Wow, it has been over a year since my last post! While there's still some time left on the 2023 clock, I feel that it's time for a big update on 2023. So what I have I been up to?

I started the year in The Netherlands where I visited my partner and family over the Christmas break. Right after I came back, I worked on the design and planning for my next big experiment; testing the effects of ocean warming on seagrasses and their belowground microbes in the field! For this experiment, I would move seagrasses from ambient to warmer waters in front of a powerstation that releases hot water and manipulate the presence/absence of belowground microbes at the same time. This monstrous experiment was pretty much ready to go in March until we realized that water temperatures were so high that there wasn't much of a temperature difference between the 'cold' and 'warm' sites. Running this experiment thus wouldn't have made much sense. Bummer. Big bummer.

Since I still needed to do two experiments this year, I quickly needed to come up with a different experiment that I could run in the meantime. It had to be something small and manageable and related to my work. I decided to follow up on Rose Fuggle's work looking at the role of belowground microbes in seagrass performance under nutrient stress. She performed these experiments in the lab so I was curious to know whether the same would hold true in the field. I created a nutrient gradient to test both the effects of nutrient limation and excess nutrients. In the end, as always, it was not as small as I had in mind initially. But with a great team we made it happen! Special thanks to Josee, Agus and Dani for amazing their help with the harvest and Katie, Dani, Steph and Emmerson for helping with the set up.

At the same time, Dani Tweedale set up her honors experiment at the same site as where my experiment was running. I helped her with that experiment as well. Cool work on herbivory effects on seagrasses and their belowground microbiome. She handed in her thesis a couple weeks ago, such a big effort!

Pretty much right after the nutrient experiment was finished, I started the planning for the 'big' warming field experiment. Labeling all pots and tubes, ordering materials, arranging volunteers, booking cars, airbnbs etc. There's always a lot more time going into this than I think it would.

Keep an eye out for more news!