Farewell Gift for Anton Pijpers
In November 2025 we will say farewell to our President, Anton Pijpers, who is retiring after eleven years on the Executive Board, eight of which as President. Anton has indicated that instead of a personal gift, he would prefer a contribution to the large-scale experiment
BioCliVE
BioCliVEIn the Botanical Gardens, Utrecht plant and soil ecologists are recreating natural grasslands in hundreds of containers and studying the effects of a changing climate in combination with biodiversity loss. The researchers plan to monitor these grasslands for 15 years in order to also map out the long-term effects.
The aim is to use this knowledge to build the ecosystem of the future, one that is, for example, more resilient to extreme weather. This Utrecht University Biodiversity and Climate Variability Experiment (UU BioCliVE) is unique in its scale and duration.Any contribution, small or large, to this experiment is greatly appreciated. Join us in helping!
On behalf of Anton Pijpers, many thanks.
Photo: Echt Mooij photography
The experiment was set up in May 2017 at the Utrecht University Botanical Gardens. It is a collaborative effort of the researchers at the Ecology & Biodiversity group of the Department of Biology at Utrecht University.
The long-term experiment uses 352 containers, each with 1000 liters of soil, to precisely construct grassland ecosystems that represent a gradient of biodiversity. By using such large constructed ecosystems, we can precisely manipulate our grassland communities, while achieving a realistic scale that allows for real-life ecosystem interactions. At the same time, we can impose future climate conditions that for instance change precipitations patterns, which for the Netherlands means drier summers and wetter winters, where extreme rainfall and drought events occur more often.
The experimental grasslands represent riverine grassland communities, characteristic of periodically flooded sandy soils ('glanshaverhooiland' in Dutch). The containers have different levels of plant diversity: they contain 1, 4, 8 or 12 species of grasses and forbs. Using this experimental plant species richness gradient, we can study the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning during the climate manipulations we apply.
