Climate

Heat, drought or - at the other extreme - torrential rains. At NIOO, we make thorough study of climate change and its ecological effects.

If we fail to curb global warming, the consequences will be irreversible. How resilient is nature? How good are species at adapting? To answer these questions, NIOO studies food chains and seasonal timing.

Mismatches in time

If spring temperatures continue to rise, the caterpillars of the winter moth will hatch earlier and earlier. There may not be enough young oak leaves at that time for them to feed on. Or songbirds like the great tit may miss the caterpillar peak that they depend on to feed their chicks.

We've been collecting such data for decades. To find out what is changing on our planet, and how fast. We’ve discovered that great tits are adapting, by laying their eggs earlier. That’s good news for now, but there are limits to how far species can adapt.

Nature-based solutions

If we look carefully, we'll see that nature does offer solutions to the climate change problem.

Just think of the soil storing large amounts of carbon. In forests and grasslands, for instance. This means that it doesn’t end up in the atmosphere as greenhouse gases. We increasingly understand how soil life steers this process and how we as human beings can stimulate it.