Long-term ecological experiments in plant-soil ecosystems - a joint ECT-PSE Annual Science conference, Buxton (May 2019)

Grasses and graphics and eyeballs, oh my!  I give my first conference presentation

 Nervewracking to have to stand up in front of a lot of eyeballs and talk about my results so far - but the questions were interesting and easy, and I was tweeted!  If I ever speak at a conference again, I'll make sure my slides actually show up... Rookie error, not to check that the slides project so that people can actually read them (I blame the sunshine ;) ).  Some really interesting talks, and great to catch up with ECT's Ben Sykes, Jerry Tallowin and Robin Buxton.

 

And a trip to see where it all started....

Day 2 included a trip out to the Buxton Climate Change impact lab - this feels like the grandfather of grassland climate change experiments, and a real thrill to see the site and set-up I've read so much about.  Well worth the trip, especially as our guides were the very knowledgeable J. Philip Grime and Andrew Askew.  

The terrain is somewhat different to that at RainDrop!