Vandaag staat mijn visie als hypothetische minister van Landbouw, Natuur, en Stikstof in dit prachtige artikel in @volkskrant.nl Dat stuk is natuurlijk erg kort en simpel, daarom hier een 🧵 van mijn hoofdpunten met wat meer onderbouwing! www.volkskrant.nl/kijkverder/v...

Abstract submission for ISEE13 is now open, and we have a general program and an invited speaker line-up!

De balans van vanavond: drie punten én nul kans dat de Baltische staten in geval van een Russische aanval een beroep zullen gaan doen op Nederlandse verdedigers. #litned

Zo leuk en weer eens iets anders: ik ben bezig met het schrijven van het voorwoord in een kinderboek over een regenworm! Een geweldig verhaal met prachtige tekeningen! Komt binnenkort uit, grote aanrader (zeg ik zonder commerciële belangen). boekenvankoko.nl/robbie/

"Hoe gaat het?" Robbert Dijkgraaf Eppo Bruins Gouke Moes Zo gaat het.

Very interesting! It’s not often that interests of defense, climate mitigation and nature restoration align.

Call for manuscripts - joint special Issue #Geoderma / #GeodermaRegional - "Tropical Soil Science: Bridging Knowledge Gaps in Biogeochemistry, Plant-Soil Interactions and Climate change Mitigation" Geoderma: tinyurl.com/bdf2989c Geoderma Regional: tinyurl.com/3yarxaan photos: Sebastian Doetterl

📣Last week new doctor Enno Sonntag, joint PhD with Thuenen Institute of Organic Farming, successfully defended his thesis: “Earthworm Farming for Circular Food Systems: Upcycling Residual Biomass into Edible Protein and Organic Soil Amendments.” 🪱🪱 Congratulations Dr. Enno!🎉

Onder zonnepanelen groeien planten slechter of niet, wat zijn weerslag heeft op de biodiversiteit en de kwaliteit van de bodem. De mate van het effect hangt sterk af van de opstelling van de panelen. Luuk Scholten doet daar onderzoek naar. www.resource-online.nl/index.php/20...

🤩✨Feeling incredibly lucky to be part of such a vibrant, creative team — and a very proud supervisor of @tulca.bsky.social 🪱, alongside @mhagens.bsky.social & @jwvangroenigen.bsky.social 💫. We will make very good use of this new chair 😆!

🏅EGU Awards & Medals 2026 nominations are open! Celebrate excellence in geoscience research, outreach, journalism & policy. 🗓️ Deadline: 15 June 2025 🔗 www.egu.eu/awards-medals #EGU #Geoscience #SciComm #SciencePolicy #STEMRoleModels #Awards

Highlight of the year for our group :-). Congratulations to the Louis Bolk Institute for winning the trophy this year!

Another Timelapse movie in the making. We are so lucky to work with Wim, his Timelapse movies with us have done so much for illustrating the importance of soil biota. See this classic, for example. vimeo.com/246948827

👋 Heading to #EGU25 tomorrow! Excited to catch up with many of you. Will be talking about earthworms🪱, roots, AMF and how they shape soil phosphorus and carbon cycling🌱!

✊📚📣Once again, speaking out against the Dutch government’s disastrous cuts to science and research 🚫. Some of our SBL team showed up to make noise and stand up for the future of knowledge! www.fnv.nl/cao-sector/o...

In our Soil Quality course, today special @sbl-wur.bsky.social professor Gerard Velthof of Wageningen Environmental Research explains the long and complex history of Dutch / European manure policy. Slightly intimidating and exasperating…

The first announcement of ISEE13 is up! Hope to see all earthwormologists in Wageningen on August 23-28, 2026! We will still improve the website a bit, but we already have the best organizing team and an amazing logo (thanks @tulca.bsky.social !) With @niooknaw.bsky.social, VU, Louis Bolk Institute

Last week Frans fertilized our plots in the earthworm hotel: manure, compost, mineral fertilizer are going to feed our guests, we need to satisfy their needs🌿The hotel is used for research and outreach purposes. Find more informaton in the poster designed by PhD Tulllia Calogiuri @tulca.bsky.social

📣Freshly published by Jordy van' Hull, PhD in our group and Wageningen Environmental Research. Congratulations Jordy for this first paper 🥳! How can we reduce nitrogen losses from renovated grasslands 💧☁️🌱? Check it out 😉. 🔽 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Mooi zo!

Nice study on an important but often overlooked ecosystem engineer. Highly recommended reading!

Congratulations to our own @tulca.bsky.social, who showed (with @mhagens.bsky.social, @jwvangroenigen.bsky.social, @alixvidal.bsky.social and many others) that earthworms can contribute to silicate weathering both while alive and after they died! As always, great graphics by Tullia herself!

Dominique Arrouays was a central person in our community and contributed in many ways to our journal. As a prolific author; a trusted reviewer; a respected editorial board member; and as a personal friend to many in our team. [1/2] www.forevermissed.com/dominique-ar...

WTF?!?! Uitzonderlijk slechte score op de Spellings App vanochtend. Maar hier ben ik het gewoon niet mee eens. Niet met het verdwijnen van de d, en eigenlijk ben ik het niet eens eens met het bestaan van het werkwoord “statten”.

We just received some quite positive reviewer reports back for a manuscript our PhD student submitted. But one very short report had rather generic comments, adding there was a pdf with more detailed comments & "...in some instances I also suggested to cite more relevant and recent literature" [...]

According to the wisdom of the internet, the most important activity related to soil quality is scooping soil (with or without a plant) with your hand, something (fact check) which doesn't affect soil quality positively & is outright detrimental for plant quality.

Glad to see that the best course in Wageningen gets (almost) the recognition it deserves. I still miss teaching this course every year!

"Concepts and Practices for Managing Soil Health", in "Sustainable Soil Systems in Global South", SpringerNature, 2024. By our own Chindi Kapembwa and Gerlinde De Deyn, as well as Victor Shitumbanuma, Jones Yengwe, and Sijmen Schoustra. Send us a DM for a copy. doi.org/10.1007/978-...

Two more weeks before I step down as chair of the Editors-in-Chief at Geoderma, and I increasingly realize I'm going to miss riding my moral high horse like this, which comes disturbingly easy to me.... Must be my Calvinistic upbringing. Always happy to point out somebody else's fault...

From the report of an excellent but miffed reviewer: "The methods section not being updated following a change in XXX is a serious oversight, and this does not reflect well on the senior authors of the manuscript." Sometimes it is indeed good to remind senior authors that they also have full [...]

New in Geoderma: "Effects of exopolysaccharides from Rhizobium tropici on transformation and aggregate sizes of iron oxides" by Huimin Zhang, Steve L. Larson, John H. Ballard, Kauri A. Runge, Xinyun Xie, Olanrewaju M. Olafuyi, Hongxiang Hu, and Fengxiang X. Han. buff.ly/3CQIQ40 #OpenAccess

It seems a long time ago that I was excited for Geoderma to have its own (then) Twitter account. Times have changed, and as one of my last acts as Chair of the Editors in Chief, I’m happy to announce that we have started our migration to BlueSky!

"How to monitor the ‘success’ of agricultural sustainability: A perspective", by Loekie Schreefel, our own @rachelcreamer.bsky.social, Hannah van Zanten, Imke de Boer, @rogierschulte.bsky.social and others. doi.org/10.1016/j.gf... #OpenAccess.

Kröger ✅

Even een paar jaar wachten, maar dan hebben we een prachtige schutting met leifruit. Meest oude Nederlandse rassen: Winterrietpeer (stoofpeer), Groningse Kroon (moesappel), Rode Dijkmanszoet (stoofappel), en Leskovacz (kweepeer). Mooi tegenwicht tegen de Britse dominantie in de achtertuin […]

Please consider sponsoring my colleague Gabriel Moinet, who is doing something stupid for a very good cause: raising money for two talented students to attend a PhD course on climate mitigation and adaptation. Only a few days left!

For now, 56 retractions recently at Science of the Total Environment and counting. For now, most of them are linked to one person, Guilherme Malafaia, who seems to have provided fake mail addresses for reviewers. Lost of questions related to the role of.. (www.science.org/content/arti...) [1/x]

The highlight of my day so far (although we celebrate “Sinterklaas” tonight so things could improve further): discussing draft propositions of a PhD thesis with a student. Some want to abolish this typically Dutch custom. I want to expand it - promotors should be allowed to submit propositions too!

Earthworm presence is not the same as earthworm activity, as they can be inactive for protracted periods of time. Our brilliant MSc student Péter Garamszegi came up with an easy method to quantify earthworm activity, using the difference in density between earthworms with and without a filled [...]

Ik was toch een klein beetje opgelucht toen het “slechts” over vuurwerk bleek te gaan 😳.

Altijd weer een fijn moment in de herfst: zaadcatalogus voor de moestuin in de brievenbus. Inclusief retro-handmatig-in-te-vullen-bestellijst! Ok, ik bestel uiteindelijk gewoon via de website, maar mooie herinneringen aan mijn opa die bij dezelfde leverancier vrijwel dezelfde bestellijst gebruikte.

I absolutely think that we are in a bubble on BlueSky, and I hope that it stays that way. I’m passionate about interacting with the general public, but not everywhere all the time. It is important and fun to also have a place to discuss with colleagues & I hope it will stay that way (but it won’t).

It’s our daughters’ fifth birthday, and for the traditional treat at school we aimed for a delicate balance between vaguely educational; complete idiot level of difficulty; lactose-free; but STILL unhealthy 👍.

The strain on scientific publishing: we set out to characterise the remarkable growth of the scientific literature in the last few years, in spite of declining growth in total scientists. What is going on? direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... A 🧵 1/n #AcademicSky #PhDchat #ScientificPublishing #SciPub

Hier in Wageningen bereiden we ons voor op de bezuinigingen door het graven van een slotgracht…

Can we reduce GHG emissions from pasture peatlands by strongly increasing the groundwater table? This cool experiment with large intact peat cores from our PhD student Erne Blondeau suggests not. Reduced CO2 fluxes are compensated by incressed N2O fluxes. #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1016/j.ge...

Now that I am here on Bluesky, for any new followers interested in soil organic matter, here is my recommendation of a recent review by Henry Janzen- his papers are always worth reading for wisdom and insight. Open Access bsssjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Rejection is the rule in publishing, certainly for me. But then there is the rare moment when you get 2 manuscripts back with minor revisions within an hour, earthworm papers by students Peter Garamszegi & Tullia Calogiuri, co-supervised by the amazing @mhagens.bsky.social & @alixvidal.bsky.social!

After 10 years, it’s time to step down as Chair of the Editors in Chief of Geoderma. Time for new ideas, before I run out of them. I’m very happy to have an excellent successor in Naoise Nunan, and look forward to becoming a “normal” Associate Editor again. 1/2 www.sciencedirect.com/journal/geod...

I also finally deleted my Twitter account. Hadn’t used it for months and still found it difficult to do. I guess because of the good memories from years back. I hope BlueSky will remain the great alternative it is, although I don’t see what will prevent the bots, trolls etc joining in due time.