News

Learning it in the lecture hall is one thing, looking at it on a farm is something else. That's why we take our fourth Bachelor's semester students on excursions twice within the Crop Production course. Together with Achim Walter, external page Andi Lüscher, and external page Sonja Hassold, Anna K. Gilgen led the first excursion on a farm in Wetzikon. On this perfectly sunny day, the students identified grass species in vegetative state, studied field flora, looked at wheat in the crop rotation, and got insights into stand management and the farm. Also for the lecturers, it was a very nice opportunity to exchange with the farmers, but also with each other and to learn something new from another agricultural discipline. A big thank you to the Hug family for their hospitality and time, and to the students for their engagement and interaction. (11 April 2025)

From 7 to 11 April, the students of external page Rämibühl High School in Zurich hosted their annual Fokuswoche Klimakrise – a week dedicated to climate change topics, fully organized by the students. This year’s focus was water. Our doctoral student Sophie Emberger took part in the poster fair to present her research on the hydraulic strategies of urban trees within the UrbaNature project. She shared how city trees manage water stress and joined lively discussions from vertical greening to a future where parking lots are replaced by tiny forests. A personal highlight: being invited into the teacher’s lounge for coffee. Thank you for the warm welcome and great organization – it was a pleasure to be a part of this week. (10 April 2025)

Nina Buchmann was invited to give a seminar at the external page Colloquium in Atmosphere, Climate and Earth Observation of the external page Institute of Geography at University of Bern. In her talk entitled "Terrestrial ecosystem functioning in a changing climate: Fluxes, drivers, feedbacks at multiple scales" Nina shared results from our research within Swiss FluxNet. (2 April 2025)

We warmly welcome Daniela Prando da Silva to our group. Daniela starts her IAESTE internship with us today. She will mainly work in the UrbaNature project, supporting Sophie Emberger’s field sampling campaigns. (1 April 2025)

Once a year, the external page ICOS station PIs gather for the ICOS ecosystem monitoring station assembly (MSA) meeting. This year, Iris Feigenwinter went to Madrid to represent external page ICOS-CH and the Davos station. The excursion to external page las Majadas de Tiétar, an ICOS station in the unique Dehesa ecosystem, showcased an amazing workplace for scientists. While the grass is grazed by cattle, the dominant tree species is holm oak (Quercus ilex). Its acorns can be eaten by pigs, resulting in the famous Ibérico ham. At the meeting, attendees discussed CO₂ fluxes, sampling and calibration, documentation (BADM), the FLUXNET 2025 initiative, and further ICOS-related topics, ending with a group exercise on ICOS keywords. (22-24 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)

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 to 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)

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)

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!!

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)