Projects
The interaction between climate and the African great lakes: A study with a regional climate model. KU Leuven
In this PhD project, use will be made of the regional climate model CCLM, in which only very recently, the freshwater lake parameterisation scheme FLake has been implemented. The research will be build around three main axes: (i) improvement of the treatment of turbulent exchanges and lake dynamics in FLake, (ii) climate simulations –and evaluation– for Central and Eastern Africa using CCLM driven by Global Climate Model (GCM) output, and ...
Astronomical Forcing effects on the climate during the extreme Greenhouse Devonian period: Integration of time series analyses from stratigraphic sections worldwide with climate modeling Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Large solitary trees in the face of climate change: contributions to biodiversity and ecosystem functions KU Leuven
Large solitary trees (LSTs) are recognised for their ecological
significance and disproportionately contribute to biodiversity and
ecosystem functioning. In agricultural and urban landscapes, they
serve as islands with their own microenvironment: they harbour
important parts of local biodiversity, contribute to carbon stocks and
nutrient cycling, and cool the local microclimate. LSTs, however,
decline across the ...
Large solitary trees in the face of climate change: contributions to biodiversity and ecosystem functions Ghent University
Large solitary trees (LSTs) are recognised for their ecological significance and disproportionately contribute to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. In agricultural and urban landscapes, they serve as islands with their own microenvironment: they harbour important parts of local biodiversity, contribute to carbon stocks and nutrient cycling, and cool the local microclimate. LSTs, however, decline across the world due to climate change ...
Extreme precipitation and climate change: novel insights by case-selective convection-permitting model downscaling Ghent University
When weather extremes occur, the question of the extent to which climate change played a role is quickly asked. For precipitation extremes, as in the case of the recent floodings in Wallonia and Western Germany, it is particularly difficult to answer that question. Due to its high computational cost there are indeed few climate model experiments at the fine spatial resolution needed to accurately resolve the physics of deep convection crucial ...
Forecasting fish distribution dynamics under climate change: insights from a rapidly warming arctic KU Leuven
Temperatures in the Arctic are rising three times faster than the global average, resulting in a rapid decline in sea-ice, and lengthening of the ice-free season. As sea ice retreats, fishing grounds that were previously not accessible will inevitable open up and shipping activities in the Arctic will increase together with the potential of accidental oil spills into the marine ecosystem. Environmental changes, together with increased ...
Managing plant species translocations: using genomic tools to unraveling interactions between adaptation to climate and adaptation to habitat fragmentation KU Leuven
Global warming is occurring to a rate that exceeds the potential of most species to evolve phenotypes adapted to warmer climates. Assisted migration, or the deliberate northward translocation of individuals, is a widely discussed conservation strategy aiming to introduce phenotypes pre-adapted to projected climate change. However, there is a critical lack of assisted migration studies integrating the effects of habitat fragmentation, another ...
BIONUCLIM: Biodiversity, nutrient availability, and climate effects on terrestrial ecosystem productivity and stability. University of Antwerp
ClimaTE change-related Mortality in different Population groups in URbanized Belgium - [project acronym: TEMPUR] Vrije Universiteit Brussel
biggest threats to health worldwide. Greenhouse gas emissions are the main driver of these global
rising temperatures, affecting health and mortality worldwide. Currently almost half of the global
population lives in urban areas, usually characterized by their higher environmental hazard burden
(e.g., elevated levels of heat ...