News
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February
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 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)