News
Find all our news from previous years in our News Archive.
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March
Our measurements at Waldlabor on Hönggerberg are highlighted in the current issue of the forestry magazine of the canton of Zurich external page Zürcher Wald. The two-page article explains how our eddy covariance measurements will help estimate how long forest plantations take to turn from a carbon source to a carbon sink. We thank the Waldlabor staff for raising awareness of our research with stakeholders in forestry and the broader public. Read the Download full article (PDF, 8 MB) (in German). (26 March 2025)
After more than a year of intensive coding and testing by Philip Meier and his colleagues in our technicians' teams, we are proud to announce that Früebüel (CH-FRU) is the first of our field sites acquiring eddy covariance data solely using our new robust eddy covariance data acquisition software rECorD.
The program is coded in Python, built on and a direct succession of Werner Eugster’s well-tried external page sonicreadHS eddy data acquisition software. The basic principle of sonicreadHS has proofed its reliability, sturdiness and quality for over 20 years now. rECorD includes a more sophisticated buffering scheme which reduces data loss due to jitter or irregular data delivery of gas analyzers, also at arbitrary sampling frequencies different from 20 Hz. The design is modular, with rECorD acting as the base and the standalone modules for the gas analyzers being relays to present the analyzer data in standardized form to rECorD on local datagram sockets. This makes our rECorD highly flexible and development for new devices very efficient. rECorD is meant to be run on a Linux host.
We are happy to share the code and instructions which will soon be openly available. In the mean time, contact for information on supported devices and code! (18 March 2025)
ICOS-CH coordinator Susanne Burri and external page HFSJG organized an excursion to the ICOS Class 1 Atmosphere Station Jungfraujoch. Along with Sue, also Iris Feigenwinter, Philip Meier joined the external page ICOS Switzerland the excursion tot the highest station in the ICOS network at 3572 m a.s.l! The group was first welcomed by the custodians Sonja Stöckli and Thomas Furter for coffee and tea in the old library and then went on a tour through the research station that was built in 1931, guided by the custodians and external page Prof. Eliza Harris (ICOS PI at University of Bern and new director of the station). They then continued to the Sphinx Laboratories, where ICOS measurements and observations were explained by external page Martin Steinbacher (researcher for ICOS at Empa) and Monika Hager (responsible for the ICOS flask sampler at University of Bern). The custodian Thomas Furter explained his daily work at the station, such as regular cloud observations for external page MeteoSwiss. Greenhouse gas concentrations at Jungfraujoch are external page continously rising and external page air temperature has already risen by 2.1 °C between the pre-industrial period 1871–1900 and now (1994–2023).
The weather and views up on Jungfraujoch were fantastic all day. In the end, there was also the possibility to visit the touristic parts of Jungfraujoch, such as the Ice Palace and the Plateau. On the way back, the group decided that the next ICOS Switzerland excursion should go to the ICOS Class 1 Ecosystem Station Davos! (17 March 2025)
Very proudly installed at the entrance of the research station.
Welcome coffee at the old library of the research station. Prof. Eliza Harris (New ICOS-CH PI at University of Bern and new director of the research station) explaining us facts about Jungfraujoch on the terrace of the research station. She gave her first tour of the station – to ICOS Switzerland!
Martin Steinbacher (researcher for ICOS at Empa) explaining the measurements and observation at the Sphinx laboratories.
How is it to measure that high up? Exchange between ICOS-CH Ecosystem community and ICOS-CH Atmosphere community. Correctly wired? Philip Meier (technician for the Davos station) carefully studying the famous ICOS flask sampler. Finally made it! Iris Feigenwinter (ICOS Station PI for Davos) and Susanne Burri (ICOS-CH coordinator) were on the Jungfraujoch for the first time. Incredible views over the Aletsch glacier. The excursion group together with the custodians at the terrace of the Sphinx.
Surrounded by ice in the ice cave. Do not slip, Iris Feigenwinter!
external page Prof. Natascha Kljun from Lund University (Sweden) visited us for a week to work on a paper related to one of our project proposals. To be continued! (17-21 March 2025)
Inauguration lecture and party ? We are coming! external page Prof. Valentin Klaus, former member of the group and now professor at the Ruhr University Bochum, gave an extra inauguration talk for friends and family and we all came ... Thanks so much! We enjoyed the talk, the party, and the visit to Bochum. (15 March 2025)
Members of the InsuranceGrass project had their final in-person project meeting in Zurich. They updated each other on the progress of each work package, made plans to conclude the project this year, and shared reflections and feedback on the project. They also exchanged findings with one of their industry partners, external page Schweizer Hagel, and visited the community-supported agricultural farm external page Huebhof. (13/14 March 2025)
Welcome to external page Paulina Englert from University of Göttingen who will stay with us as an exchange doctoral student for the next three months. We are looking forward to a great exchange on greenhouse gas fluxes of agricultural sites. (3 March 2025)
February
Remember the hand-colored glass slides we once found in one of our cupboards? In the meantime, they have not only been put together in the book "external page Fundamentals – die Pflanzenwelt des «I.H.»: Aktualität einer Sammlung handkolorierter Glasdiapositive" by Christiane Jacquat, but they are now also openly available in the E-Pics collection of the ETH library. The pictures never cease to amaze with their attention to detail and artistic finesse. Check out the slides, you'll be fascinated as well. (28 February 2025)
The annual LERNfeld young researchers course took place again. Master's students from different disciplines were introduced to the LERNfeld environmental education project and were able to get their hands dirty in determining earthworm ecotypes. In the frame of LERNFeld, Master's students visit school classes, provide tutorials on methods, introduce how to collect data, and help school students to understand the science behind the data. In turn, the early-career scientists benefit from these interactions by gaining educational and outreach experiences. The course was led by Sabina Keller and held with lecturers from partner organizations in spring-like weather. (27 February 2025)
Congrats to Lilli (Liliana) Scapucci who successfully defended her doctoral thesis today!!! Great talk and excellent answers to the questions of the internal and external reviewers. (21 February 2025)
Lorenz Allemann visited Colombia, the country of salsa, pandebono, café and corrientazo, for a second research stay. In 2022, he carried out his MSc thesis in the Colombian Amazon and now returned to visit the external page Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical CIAT in Palmira. Lorenz gave a seminar about drivers of nitrous oxide fluxes in grassland, intensified the connection to the Tropical Forages group and was given an overview of the institute and current projects. Muchas gracias por la hospitalidad! Sin duda volveré - external page Colombia tierra querida. (27 January-7 February 2025)
Fieldwork in winter can be challenging but is also a good opportunity to escape the cloudy conditions in Zurich. Marius Floriancic, Iris Feigenwinter, and two Master's students went to our external page ICOS-CH and Swiss FluxNet site in Davos to take snow samples. The Master’s project is part of the new EU Horizon Project CryoSCOPE and aims to estimate sublimation using stable water isotope analyses and eddy covariance water vapor fluxes from our flux towers. In the afternoon, we also stopped by Marius’ discharge station in the Dischma valley to collect water samples from the Dischmabach. Overall, it was a very nice and sunny day in the field, including some short interactions with skiers that were passing by on the slopes next to our stations. (4 February 2025)
Each year in January, we submit the "AAA", ETH's Annual Academic Achievement report. And here are the achievements of our group from the past year 2024:
- 355 students taught in 652 semester hours during 2024,
- 292 grades given in 2024,
- 1 Bachelor's and 2 Master's theses finished in 2024,
- 10 active doctoral students (by the end of the year),
- a large number of publications ... 42, many written with colleagues from all over the globe.
86% of our papers have been published in open access journals (Gold OA) or are open access (Hybrid OA). To increase the open access, we also uploaded postprints to the ETH Research Collection (Green OA). The result: 94% of our journal publications from 2024 are openly available to everybody.
Thanks to a great team!!
Continuous eddy covariance measurements require a reliable power supply. To enable smooth data recording and storage at our station at Hönggerberg, our technicians placed two new solar panels at the site. And what a difference that made! Even in the current cloudy conditions, the new panels deliver enough power to support our measurements. (29 January 2025)
In a short article in the farmer's newspaper die grüne, Nina Buchmann shares our findings on N2O emissions from grassland and cropland and concludes that management must support plants to win the competition for soil nitrogen against the microorganisms. The article is complemented with a comment by Hans Frei, former Vice President of the Swiss Farmer's Union. Find out more in the external page article. (20 January 2025)
Our Master course on Stable Isotope Ecology took place again this week. The students attended lectures in the morning and worked on their practical projects in the afternoon. Great success! (10-17 January 2025)
Our flux data are - again - in high demand, the interest in such kind of ecosystem measurements is ever increasing. Lukas Hörtnagl, our data scientist, has been collecting download numbers for our datasets since 2015. In 2024 alone, datasets from our six long-term Swiss FluxNet sites were downloaded a record-high 8477 times, which is an increase of almost 30% compared to 2023 and the highest number of downloads since we started sharing the data. Most downloads were recorded for the ICOS Class 1 station Davos, followed by Oensingen and Chamau. In total, we share 129 site-years of data. With the recent announcement of the external page FLUXNET Data System Initiative, which will be fully operational by December 2025, we expect the interest in our data to furhter increase. (6 January 2025)
A warm welcome to Flora Zourek who joins our group as a doctoral student today! Flora will work in the EYE-CLIMA project. (6 January 2025)
Happy New Year! The Grassland Sciences group wishes you the very best for 2025! We are looking forward to another year of great teamwork, inspiring collaborations, bringing science, education, and outreach further together, and meeting many colleagues, students, school kids, and the public. Find out about our 2024 activities in our News Archive. (1 January 2025)