a clear blue sky and green grassy foregrand

a 1 x 1 m quadrat sits over very dense grassy vegetation

dry and brown grasses sit among a backdrop of a partly cloudy sky

a 1 x 1 m quadrat sits among completely bare ground

What a difference a year makes! Nearly 200 mm of late summer rain at Fowlers Gap and our DRAGNet plots are unrecognisable. "Just add rain" as Garry says. Tusind tak to Liv Portmann and Peyton Hampel for their help - the biomass harvesting is off the charts! @loveyouleafyou.bsky.social

Huge effort from the @bugnet.bsky.social team. Been great to be part of this network and fantastic to see this published

Finished up the annual sampling and a spray treatment for @joe-atkinson.bsky.social and I @bugnet.bsky.social sites out at Fowlers Gap. Blue skies and red earth always a great backdrop for fieldwork

Redirecting

Third paper from my phd is out. This was such a nice collaboration, each of us bringing different skills. Some neat images and a relatively simple method to upscale biocrust surveys in dry conditions doi.org/10.1016/j.ge...

Earless Dragon Tympanocryptis tetraporophora on red clay

Two quadrats sit on bare red clay

Another quadrat sits on bare red clay with scattered dying plants

An open vista of a semi arid chenopod shrubland/grassland mosaic with blue sky and scattered clouds

Had a great week before our at the Fowlers Gap Arid Zone Research Station doing the annual sampling of our (me and @loveyouleafyou.bsky.social) DRAGNet experimental site. Pretty crispy this year with some pretty fast cover estimates... A lot of bare ground...

Faster than expected: release of nitrogen and phosphorus from decomposing woody litter Deadwood represents globally important carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) pools. Current wood nutrient dynamics models are extensions of those developed for leaf litter decomposition. Howe.....

Little Christmas surprise: check out our new paper out in @newphyt.bsky.social, we investigated nutrient release dynamics in wood. Takeaways: what is known from leaf litter does not apply to wood! Time to consider wood and their decomposers different to those of leaf litter. doi.org/10.1111/nph....

Thank you 😊 it was great to be a part of this special issue

First phd chapter out 😊