New article on local adaptation at the range edges from my PhD published!
0 Kommentare
Mountain Forum 2015 in China
I am off to China in a couple of hours. I will fly to Chengdu where I will participate the Mountain Forum 2015. We will spend some days in Chengdu with lectures on various topics in mountain ecology and learning about traits data. Then we will head off to the mountains to do actual field work and get a traits data set along an elevational gradient. We will stay in Moxi a town located at 2500m, near Mt. Gongga. The field sites go up to 4000m.
Aurlandsfjorden
Living in my sleeping bag
It’s peak summer season and then again it’s not. For weeks it has been cold and rainy and not much of a summer up here in the North. But enough of that!
I spend 3-4 days in the field at the moment and it feels like I am living in my sleeping bag. Last week a lovely person from Switzerland visited me and I dragged her to the field. This was of course the deal all along and she enjoyed it half way I think. On the weekend we went to a festival in the mountains (vinjerock) which was spectacular. Spectacularly cold and wet, but also very much fun listening to Norwegian bands. I think we were the only non and half Norwegians at the festival and for a good reason. It’s a Norwegian thing, but we had fun.
A lot has happened but the days also repeat itself so here a few impressions from one rainy day at Gudmedalen!
Field work in sogn
Grasses
I admit grasses scared me for a long time. No, I don’t have hay fever. But identifying grasses correctly is difficult. This year I decided to record the flowering of the grasses. And now I suddenly see grasses everywhere. And I start to like them.
Patience
A trip to three different sites thought me that patience is needed this year…
Mondays
Why we don’t like Mondays?
Maybe because things like that only happen on Mondays! I got up a little after 5 to drive 3 hours to one of my field sites. Four hours counting flowers, wearing thights because it was ice cold. It’s June! Even up here this means summer. On the way home a tractor had a flat tire and we waited for over one hour to pass. Then John Snow died which made everything much worse. Finally I ended up waiting four hours on the night train in Voss and missed the connection to Göteborg…
Well I’m in Oslo now. The sun is shining and it‘ Tuesday!
Ros for matlaging i dag
Early flowering plants
Summer in Norway is late this year. 2 weeks delayed in the lowlands and we don’t know about the mountains, because there is still too much snow to say. At least one of my sites is ready and I get a mini field trip each week. Last week some planst finally decided to start flowering: among the first are Viola palustris (Marsh violet), Anthoxanthum odoratum (sweet vernal grass) and Carex vaginata (Sheated sedge).
