In this new video, Gesche Blume-Werry presents the very interesting findings of her study, published in the last issue (November) of Journal of Ecology, and titled ‘Short-term climate change manipulation effects do not scale up to long-term legacies: effects of an absent snow cover on boreal forest plants‘. This study was part of Gesche’s PhD project in which she explored the hidden life of plants below-ground and investigated the responses of roots to climate change. The video is available below and can also be found on the Journal of Ecology YouTube channel (english subtitles available).

Gesche Blume-Werry recently received her PhD from Umeå University with the project “The hidden life of plants – fine root dynamics in northern ecosystems”, supervised by Ann Milbau (Research Institute for Nature and Forest INBO, Belgium). Gesche is an ecosystem ecologist with a passion for high-latitude ecosystems and her dissertation research focused on above- and below-ground biomass allocation, production, growth and phenology. With a special emphasis on root dynamics, she wants to discover more about the hidden part of the plants below the surface and if root responses to climate change differ from shoots. This response is of special importance in high latitudes, where the majority of living plant biomass is belowground. In her current postdoctoral work at Umeå University, Gesche continues to study root production by using a unique combination of ecological and physiological methods.