Kick-Off meeting of the project "Kropotkin's Garden: networking beats competition in the struggle for limited resources"

During the week from 27th to 31th of May 2019, we welcomed our colleagues Alejandra Vovides and Thorsten Balke (University of Glasgow, UK), Jorge Lopéz-Portillo and Guillermo Angeles (INECOL, Mexico), Nadezhda Nadezhdina (Mendel University Brno, Czech Republic), and Alec Downey (ICT, Western University Australia) in Tharandt. We all are keen to understand the ecological importance of root grafts and the networking of mangrove trees, and are happy that  the Volkswagen Foundation supports this with our new project “Kropotkins Garden – GRIN”.

We used this week to refine our project goals and schedule, made some tests of the FieldMap equipment which we want use to map mangrove stands in Mexico (many thanks to Jan Wilkens from the Professorship of Silviculture at the TUD).

... but we found also some time to visit the historical town of Dresden.

... and have always given our best for a good picture.

The core team left for a workshop afterwards (1. - 5. June 2019) in the field station of the Mendel University in Obora to learn about sap flow measurements in tree roots - an important approach to understand how water flows in a tree network.