2012

New publication in Ecological Modelling by Tao Wang et al. with contributions from Lutz Merbold "State-dependent errors in a land surface model across biomes inferred from eddy covariance observations on multiple timescales", for more info click on the thumbnail.

New publication in ACP by Johanna Spiegel et al. "Temporal evolution of stable water isotopologues in cloud droplets in a hill cap cloud in central Europe (HCCT-2010)".

Dennis Imer, Jacqueline Stieger, Sebastian Wolf and Werner Eugster are currently attending the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

Our group organized and contributed to different session at the 10^th Swiss Geoscience Meeting which took place the 16^th/17^th of November in Bern.

Sessions: "Biogeochemical cycles in a changing environment" (15) organized by Ansgar Kahmen and Werner Eugster and "Greenhouse Gases: Linkages between Biosphere and Climate" (18) convened by Werner Eugster and Christoph Ritz.

Talks: "A low-cost approach to measure ambient methane concentrations in preliminary studies": Eugster W & Kling GW; "Quantification of methane emissions at the farm scale using boundary-layer volume budgets": Stieger J, Eugster W, Buchmann N; "Greenhouse gas flux budget of a managed Swiss grassland": Imer D, Merbold L, Eugster W, Stieger J, Buchmann N; "Assessment of the Swiss methane inventory with the help of in situ aircraft measurements and backward Lagrangian particle dispersion simulations": Hiller R, Neininger B, Henne S, Kuenzle T, Buchmann N, Eugster W, Brunner D; "The water sourcing strategy of drought affected temperate grasslands": Prechsl U, Kahmen A, Hammerle A, Burri S, Gilgen A, Buchmann N; "Photosynthetic ¹³C discrimination of Fagus sylvatica branches: Insights from continuous, high-frequency field measurements and a Bayesian modelling approach": Gentsch L, Sturm P, Hammerle A, Siegwolf R, Wingate L, Ogée J, Barthel M, Peter Pluess P, Baur T, Buchmann N, Knohl A; "Tracing carbon through grassland: the impact of drought on the short-term carbon flow from photosynthesis to soil respiration": Burri S, Sturm P, Baur T, Prechsl U, Knohl A, Buchmann N

The latest paper by Johanna Spiegel et al. entitled "Stable water isotopologue ratios in fog and cloud droplets of liquid clouds are not size-dependent" was published in ACP in October.

The publication "The energy balance closure of FLUXNET research sites" by Paul Stoy et al. with contributions from Lutz Merbold was accepted at Agricultural and Forest Meteorology recently.

Congratulations Lydia Gentsch to the successful defense of her dissertation.

Dr. Janos Balogh will join our group for the next 8 months to investigate soil respiration within the a project focussing on the "contribution of the different components to soil CO₂ efflux" jointly with Werner Eugster.

New Publication in AMT by Johanna Spiegel et al.: "Evaluating the capabilities and uncertainties of droplet measurements for the fog droplet spectrometer (FM-100)"

Our latest publication with contributions from Matthias Haeni and Nina Buchmann entitled "Enhanced soil carbon stocks under organic farming - A global meta-analysis" was accepted at PNAS.

Nina Buchmann was invited to give a talk at this years Jesium conference on "Water sourcing in grassland communities: Where do herbaceous plants take up their water?". In addition she co-organized a session on Community and Ecosystems jointly with Bryan Fry (AUS). Further talks were given by Lydia Gentsch and Marco Lehmann.

Another recent publication on new low-cost methane sensors was published in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques: Performance of a low-cost methane sensor for ambient concentration measurements in preliminary studies by Werner Eugster and George Kling.

Dr. José M. Grünzweig (IS) will join our group from the 1^st of September 2012 until the 31^st of January 2013 as guest professor within his sabbatical from Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Our latest publication was accepted at Regional Environmental Change: Finger R, Gilgen AK, Prechsl U, Buchmann N (2012) An economic assessment of drought effects on three grassland systems in Switzerland. Regional Environmental Change.

Werner Eugster is currently attending the FLUXPYR OPCC Meeting in Barcelona as part of the Advisory Board.

Susanne Burri and Uli Prechsl were invited to gave a talk at the Institute of Plant Sciences - Nutrition, University of Bern, with the titles: "The Short-Term Carbon Cycle under Simulated Summer Drought: Insights into pulse labeling experiments performed at a Swiss grassland site" (S. Burri) & "What goes on below-ground" (U. Prechsl).

Matthias Haeni and Dennis Imer measured 3D wind data underneath a helicopter to quantify the downwash and horizontal wind components when carrying 600 kg weights. The work was initiated by SkySafe and was conducted at the HeliSwiss station at Gruyeres Aerodrome.

The webpage of the external page Physiological Plant Ecology of Ansgar Kahmen is now available online. Our group collaborates strongly with this newly established Junior Research Group.

The most recent publication by Doerte Bachmann et al. on "Functional trait similarity of native and invasive herb species in subtropical China–environment-specific differences are the key" was accepted in Environmental and Experimental Botany.

Congratulations to Stefan Trogisch and to Johanna Spiegel to the successful defense of their dissertations.

The Grassland Sciences Group Research was presented at this years General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

Talks: Bamberger et al. external page "Deposition of terpenes to vegetation - a paradigm shift towards bidirectional VOC exchange?"; Merbold et al. external page "Greenhouse Gas Emissions from grassland: current knowledge and challenges"

Posters: Sollberger,...,Eugster, et al. external page "Seasonal changes in CH₄ emissions from an alpine reservoir, Lake Klöntal, Switzerland"; Sobek,..., Eugster, et al. external page "Intense methane emission by a temperate reservoir driven by high sediment deposition"; Kutsch, Merbold et al. external page "The Charcoal Trap: Miombo Woodlands and the Energy Needs of People"

Several posters on the current grassland and forest research ongoing in our group were presented at this years GHG-Europe Annual Meeting: Gleeson et al. Download "Environmental control on forest growth in Switzerland" (PDF, 7.8 MB); Haeni et al. Download "TREENET" (PDF, 2.2 MB); Imer et al. Download "Effects of rain pulses on GHG fluxes in a Swiss grassland" (PDF, 1.9 MB); Zielis et al. Download "Do forests care about the past?" (PDF, 876 KB)

We welcome our newest group member, Dr. Ines Bamberger who will work on GHG emissions in Switzerland.

The latest publication "Validation and comparison of two soil-vegetation-atmosphere transfer models for Tropical Africa" with contributions from Lutz Merbold was accepted at JGR-Biogeosciences.

Dr. Markus Steffens from the Soil Science Group at TU Munich was giving a talk on "Soils of a semiarid shortgrass steppe in Inner Mongolia: Organic matter composition and distribution as affected by sheep grazing" with the IAS colloquium.

SNF Agora project external page "Open the Book of Nature" with Werner Eugster as co-PI was approved. The project will start on 1^st October 2012 and its duration (first phase) will be 3 years. 

The first publications with contributions from Ansgar Kahmen in 2012:

Sachse D, Chikaraishi Y, Dawson TE, Feakins SJ, Freeman KH, Magill C, McInerney FA, van der Meer M, Pedentchouk N, Polissar P, Robins R, Schmidt HL, Sessions AL, White JWC, West JB, Kahmen A (in press) The hydrogen-isotopic composition of organic biomarkers from photosynthesizing organisms. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 40:221-249

Garcin Y, Schwab-Lavrič VF, Gleixner G, Kahmen A, Todou G, Séné O, Onana J-M, Achoundong G, Sachse D (2012) Hydrogen isotope ratios of lacustrine sedimentary n-alkanes as proxies of tropical African hydrology: insights from a calibration transect across Cameroon. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 79:106-126.