#NAEM2025 🧪Prof Yadvinder Malhi
#Rewilding #atolls will boost ecosystem resilience to #sealevelrise and make them more adaptable to #global-warming. Make them #rat free and remove planted coconut palm.

#NAEM2025 🧪Prof Yadvinder Malhi found on pristine atolls a high production of plant roots 40 km per square meter. Coconut islands have much lower nitrogen flux: in and out ~115 N kg /(ha yr) versus 237 in and out 439 kg /(ha yr); offshore also the #corals thrive better at pristine atolls.

#NAEM2025 🧪 Prof Yadvinder Malhi warns that we should not “carbonise” the role of larger animals, avoid to reduce them as means to reduce carbon as their role is more complex and they may also release carbon; #carbon-sequestration is a more long term delayed process over decades…

#NAEM2025 🧪 Prof Yadvinder Malhi
produced a key paper on the importance of larger animals in ecosystems ranging from reducing #fire-regime, open the forest, or increase nutrient cycles in the arctic through faeces productions.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Prof Yadvinder Malhi on atoll research showing a atoll of the Chagos archipelago.

#NAEM2025 🧪 Prof Yadvinder Malhi explains that human induced #rat invasions of atolls led to a collapse of #atoll ecosystem as birds and eggs were predated. A pristine atoll is therefore much more biodiverse. Animals play a critical role in shaping ecosystems and climate change #adaptation.

#NAEM2025 🧪now Prof Yadvinder Malhi Director @naturerecovery.bsky.social on the critical role of animal wildlife in climate change adaptation. Starting with #atolls which may look like paradises,but many are converted in #palm monocultures and became abandoned, resulted in a coconut dominant forest.

#NAEM2025 🧪

#NAEM2025 🧪 Dr van der Rijden identified how much #marine habitat types are protected and found it is not even across the marine habitats of the #EU seas. If #MPAs are closed, that could result into a fishery shift in to vulnerable #marine-habitats. Spatial analysis is therefore essential.

#NAEM2025 🧪 Dr Karen van der Rijden points out that fisheries trawling is very damaging to the marine communities, but she assessed whether moving #fisheries out of currently protected marine protected areas (MPA) would not make the impact worse in other areas?

#NAEM2025 🧪 Dr Karen van der Rijden of the Technical University of #Denmark on conservation strategies of the marine habitats in the #North-Sea: Rushing to reach 30% (protection) by 2030 (EU policy): but are we improving seabed habitat quality for the wider region?

Two great posters from #soils2guts project presented in the #NAEM2025 by Isabel and Marieke. Come chat about soils affecting crop and human health also today!

Laserfarm – A high-throughput workflow for generating geospatial data products of ecosystem structure from airborne laser scanning point clouds Quantifying ecosystem structure is of key importance for ecology, conservation, restoration, and biodiversity monitoring because the diversity, geogra…

#NAEM2025 Prof Daniel Kissling and team worked on a LiDAR processing workflow to process multi-terrabyte #LiDAR datasets. They used this workflow to develop a database of LiDAR derived metrics for the vegetation of the whole of the #Netherlands www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#NAEM2025 Prof Daniel Kissling university of amsterdam #ibed on the application of #LiDAR to study the role of #ecological structure on
#biodiversity and #ecosystem functioning

It was an honour to present my poster on #urbanbiodiversity in #naem2025 conference.

During my PhD I will be trying to understand how urban agglomerations like the Randstad change patterns of biodiversity and community composition.
#queersinacademia #queersinecology #insectbiodiversity

So proud of Ruiqi Wang presenting her (PhD) research on viruses of soil saprotrophic fungi at #NAEM2025 #proudsupervisor

#NAEM2025 phd candidate Robin Lexmond Hedgerows increased insect abundances accross all taxonomic groups!

#NAEM2025 PhD candidate Robin Lexmond studied insects in the #Ooijpolder, a region where #hedgerows were restored. Lexmond had to correct for weather conditions and found lo and behold: hedgerows led to a doubling of insects than without hedges, and higher abundances compared to flower strip!

#NAEM2025 PhD candidate Robin Lexmond @radboud university is researching #hedgerows and their effect on #biodiversity. In the Netherlands a lot of hedgerows were removed since 1950s. This may have led to a decrease in insects since that period.

#NAEM2025 🧪 Dr Veldhuis advocates to remove attractive crops such as #maize nearby the reserves. Triple I approach 1) interdisciplinary (#anthropologists) 2) intersectional 3) international #Global-North #Global-South exchange knowledge and skills. Check out Veldhuis’ lab: wildcolab.com

Working for Water (WfW) programme | Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment

#NAEM2025 🧪 Dr Veldhuis describes a successful water management program in #South-Africa as solution to manage #invasive water-plants by empowering local
people to manage the water resources www.dffe.gov.za/working-wate.... And get natural fires into the landscape again, to remove invasive plants.

#NAEM2025 🧪 Dr Veldhuis another problem are the invasive plants invading the #Serengeti reserves and they facilitate predators such as #hyaena which are hiding within thickets of Prosopis #invasive-plants, increases #human-wildlife conflicts.

#NAEM2025 🧪 Dr Veldhuis the soft boundaries between agriculture and #nature-reserves become hard boundaries in #Serengeti. Local government moves people forcefully out to open up areas for cattle migration increasing #wildlife-conflicts due to reduction of #buffer-areas.

Cross-boundary human impacts compromise the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem Human impacts at the edges of a protected area lead to pronounced changes in the ecological function at its core.

#NAEM2025 🧪 Dr Veldhuis points out that during the wet season there is a higher connectivity in #Serengeti Veldhuis found that human agricultural expansion increased over the last 40 years with reduced area for wildlife and reduced natural fires: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#NAEM2025 🧪 Dr Veldhuis together with studies what can we learn from the #masaai co-living in harmony with nature? #Serengeti Masaai rangeland Areas with #lifestock increases #biodiversity but reduces the biodiversity variation across space: homogenisation.

#NAEM2025 🧪 Dr Michiel Veldhuis @unileiden.bsky.social #Human-wildlife coexistence in a #biodiversity hotspots. Also focussing on the influence of #global-warming. Boost biodiversity increase reserve size and/or #living-together-with-nature again. What can we learn from the indignious people?

Second (also grea plenary is by our (#cml_biodiversity, @unileiden.bsky.social) own Michiel Veldhuis talking about human-wildlife coexistence and soft boundaries. We could learn here in the NL from African approach of not making hard boundaries between people and nature. #naem2025

Amazing and enormously inspiring talk by dr. Paula Kahumbu on conservation activism, storytelling, and importance of local knowledge and participation to conserve (/save) African biodiversity. Advice to ecology PhD students: be vocal and try to make an impact together with others! #naem2025

Wildlife Warriors Wildlife Warriors is a TV series set so shine a light on the extraordinary work that young people are doing for wildlife in Kenya and beyond.

#NAEM2025 🧪Kahumbu took the government to court to protect the vultures and was banned for three years to natural reserves. Now she is focussing on education for the indigenous people to re-embrace their wildlife and set up a televisionseries #wildlifewarriors youtube.com/@wildlifewar...

On the way to #NAEM2025 (by bike of course). So far, it is dry but expecting to encounter rain or snow. I'm really looking forward to seeing all Dutch (and Flemish!) ecologist again! Great programme ahead! Come say hi if you are attending! Points for guessing where I am waiting for a colleague...