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Researcher

Jonas Lembrechts

  • Research Expertise:I am specialist in the distribution of species, and the effect of climate and land use change on our biodiversity. With research in mountains and cities across the globe, me and my collaborators try to disentangle how biodiversity is affected by all aspects of global change. My focus lies on microclimate: the climate as experienced by organisms is totally different from what we measure in weather stations, and we need better data to improve our predictions of the fate of biodiversity in a rapidly changing world. I am co-coordinator of the Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN, www.mountaininvasions.org), focussing on the redistribution of plant species in mountains, and founder of SoilTemp (https://soiltemp.weebly.com), a global network focussing on microclimate data for use in ecological questions. I have expertise on invasive species, Urban Heat Islands, mountain ecology, plants, biodiversity
  • Keywords:BIODIVERSITY, CLIMATE CHANGE, LAND USE CHANGES, Biology
  • Disciplines:Climatology, Global ecology, Invasion biology, Soil ecology, Plant ecology, Landscape ecology
  • Research techniques:I am using observational, experimental (field and growth chamber) and modelling techniques to disentangle the role of global change on species distributions. We have experiments and observations on all continents, looking at the success of species and their link with the local environment. I mostly use big data: global databases of microclimate and species distributions data, collected in the framework of both the MIREN- and the SoilTemp-network.
  • Users of research expertise:Scientists looking for expertise on microclimate, species distributions, ecological statistics, and spatial ecology. Journalists with questions about biodiversity, climate and land use change