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My current work is connected to the SUCC and MONEC projects, as well as a revegetation experiment in Skibotn (EISCAT). I am working together with Kari Anne Bråthen, Maria Tuomi, Hanna Boehner and Eva Breitschopf on the various projects.

In the summer, I have been busy measuring CO2 fluxes on plant-mycorrhizal communities. The goal is to gain knowledge about how CO2 fluxes change when ecosystems transition to new states.

I have also been participating in the plant- fieldwork in Finnmark for MONEC and COAT for the last few summers. During the winter I am mostly at the desk, analysing data, reading, or writing.

I came to Tromsø in 2018 for an internship during my bachelor. After graduating from my bachelor and finishing my master courses in Germany, I finally moved to Tromsø in 2020 to write my thesis with Kari Anne about the effects of climate change on Empetrum nigrum in summer reindeer pastures in Finnmark.

I finished my thesis and graduated my master’s programme in global change geography and despite being a geographer by education, I have acquired much knowledge about Arctic plants and ecology over the last few years.

In general, my research interests are linked to climate change and its effect on ecosystems in the Arctic, observing and modeling ecosystem transitions.

Here about her work and interests here:

I am currently working on a project with Eivind F. Kleiven (UiT), Eeva M. Soininen (UiT) and Rolf A. Ims (UiT), using camera trap data from COAT to model and investigate community dynamics, occupancy, and spatio-temporal activity patterns of small mammals, especially within the Mustelidae family.

I recently graduated with an MSc in Conservation Biology from the University of Lund, and in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) in Trondheim, where I conducted my degree project on adaptive plasticity in response to phenologicalmismatch in Arctic foxes. In parallel to my studies, I moved to Tromsø and wanted to contribute to the research activity of the Northern Population and Ecosystems Group at UiT by getting involved in a project.

My broader research interests lean towards ecophysiology and population dynamics, space use and animal navigation, ecological modelling, and the use of telemetry for conservation and monitoring applications, with a particularly affection for carnivores and predator-prey systems in high-latitude environments.

When not at UiT, you will find me most days working as a lab technician at the FRAMcenter.

Contact: lucie.lprt@gmail.com

Lucie Laporte-Devylder

We look foward to work with a guest PhD Student that joined our group for a six month internship. Florent will be working on modeling climate effects on on egg development and hatching date of geomertrid moths in Northern Norway. Welcome!

Global warming and recent changes in precipitation patterns alter the occurrence and intensity of pest outbreaks in Northern Norway. The defoliation caused by these outbreaks of geometrid moth larvae is challenging the ecological integrity of mountain birch forests at the boreal forest-tundra ecotone. Environmental conditions during the incubation period of moths modulate the synchrony between egg hatch date and bud burst of mountain birch. Larvae that hatch too early compared to bud burst may starve to death, while larvae that emerge too late will feed on lower quality leaves, which may reduce their growth and fecundity. Consequently, predicting egg hatching dates is a potentially important step in predicting outbreaks of the three species of geometrids co-occurring in Northern Norway.

I am joining COAT (Tundra Forest Module) and the Northern Populations and Ecosystems Group at UiT as a guest PhD student from January to August 2022 to model the effect of climate on the egg development and hatching date of three species of geometrid moths in Northern Norway. The predictions of this model may then be combined with predictions of mountain birch bud burst dates to better predict moth larvae abundances, and thus, outbreaks. This objective is a chapter of my PhD project, which is more detailed on this page.

Supervisors: Sandra Hamel (Laval University), Jean-Pierre Tremblay (Laval University), Nigel Gilles Yoccoz (UiT)

We are happy to announce our new website!

In the meantime, you can use our old webpage or contact us directly if you have questions.