2013

The manuscript entitled "Functional diversity of leaf nitrogen concentrations drives grassland carbon fluxes" by A. Milcu et al. with contributions from Doerte Bachmann and Nina Buchmann has been accepted in Ecology Letters.

Background information on the LWF (Langfristige Waldökosystem-Forschung, longterm forest ecosystem research) can be found in a recently released movie by the WSL. Within the LWF network included is one of our forest research sites, Davos - Seehornwald. external page Watch the movie (in German only).

Matthias Häni and Sebastian Zielis are currently attending the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco. Both presented their research within the "Biosphere-Atmosphere Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems" session:

• Matthias Häni et al. "Compensation of winter respiration to predict annual carbon uptake in forest ecosystems"
• Sebastian Zielis et al. "Significance if previous years's weather for forest net ecosystem productivity".

New entry by Petra D'Odorico in the ETH-Zukunftsblog on global food security and the use of remote sensing products.

Marco Lehmann gave a talk during this years Swiss Geoscience Meeting in Lausanne. Title: "Carbon sources of leaf dark-respired CO₂ under different environments in potato".

New open access publication by Ines Bamberger et al. on "gap-filling strategies for annual VOC flux data sets" available in Biogeosciences Discussions.

Daniel Hofer et al. won this years poster prize during the Plant Science Center Symposium "Plants in a Changing Climate" with his poster on Download "N₂ fixing legumes in intensively managed grassland are less affected by drought than non-fixing species" (PDF, 913 KB).

"Der Nebel schluckt Handy-Frequenzen" is the title of an interview with Werner Eugster on the Fog Research published in the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung. Download Download the full article (in German) (PDF, 224 KB)

An additional report was published in NZZ am Sonntag, from which Radio Central extracted a statement and broadcasted a survey which includes a final statement by Werner Eugster: "Nebel auch in Filzbach, Emmetten & Co.". 

Our most recent open access publication entitled "Are vegetation-specific model parameters required for estimating gross primary production?" with contributions from Lutz Merbold has been published in Geoscientific Model Development Discussions.

New open access publication by Ian McCallum et al. on "Improved light and temperature responses for light-use-efficiency-based GPP models" with contributions from Lutz Merbold is available online.

"Forscher beim Spazieren" is the title of an article published in today's version of the Tages-Anzeiger that reports on PhaenoNet, a citizen science project our group is involved. external page Read the article (in German)

Jacqueline Stieger has successfully defended her PhD thesis "Methane emissions at farm and regional scales: origin, magnitude and spatio-temporal variability".

The newest publication by Matthias Sprenger et al. with contributions from Sebastian Wolf entitled "Tree species and diversity effects on soil water seepage in a tropical plantation" has been published in Forest Ecology and Management.

Nina Buchmann gave a talk during the Batsheva de Rothschild Seminar: "Coordinated Approaches for Studying Long-term Ecosystem Responses to Global Change" entitled "Lessons learned from two long-term Swiss forest sites: carbon and water dynamics". Ramat Hanadiv Park, Israel, September 30^th – October 3^rd, 2013.​

Our most recent open access publication by Sebastian Zielis et al. entitled "Forest NEP is significantly driven by previous year's weather" is now available in Biogeosciences Discussions.

The paper by Nyckowiak et al. entitled "Direct N₂O emission from agricultural soils in Poland between 1960–2009" with contributions from Lutz Merbold was accepted in Regional Environmental Change.

Marco Lehmann just returned from a three week short term scientific missions (“Investigation of the respiratory mechanism of malate in plants using carbon stable isotopes”) in Christiane Werner's lab at University of Bayreuth.

Alan Haynes successfully defended his PhD thesis on "Trophic cascades in two contrasting plant communities:the effects of herbivory on grassland ecosystems". Congratulations!

High school student Sina Jenni from the Kantonsschule Frauenfeld visited Nina Buchmann, Werner Eugster and Sabina Keller within the context of a science report project. She got information on the World Food System Center and learned on the research topics of our group including insight on the measurements of greenhouse gases.

The latest news on food security were highlighted by Nina Buchmann in the current issue of ETH GLOBE (in German, page 29ff.).

Our latest paper by Sebastian Wolf et al. was highlighted in environmentalresearchweb.

Dörte Bachmann and Carola Blessing gave a talk at the 43^rd Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (GfOe), 09.-13. Sep 2013 in Potsdam, Germany.

Sebastian Zielis gave a talk entitled "Lagged response of forest ecosystems to previous years weather as key to better NEP models" at the "ClimTree 2013 - International Conference on Climate Change and Tree Responses in Central European Forests", 1-5 September, ETH Zurich.

New publication "Climate extremes and the carbon cycle" by Markus Reichstein et al. and contributions from Nina Buchmann was published in Nature.

The manuscript "Temporal and spatial variations of CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O fluxes at three differently managed grasslands" by Dennis Imer et al. has been accepted in Biogeosciences.

The manuscript "Contrasting response of grassland versus forest carbon and water fluxes to spring drought in Switzerland" by Sebastian Wolf et al. has recently been accepted in Environmental Research Letters.

The paper by Robert Finger with contributions from Ulrich Prechsl, Anna Katarina Gilgen and Nina Buchmann entitled "An economic assessment of drought effects on three grassland systems in Switzerland" is now available online.

Our most recent open access publication "Winter greenhouse gas fluxes (CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O) from a subalpine grassland" by Lutz Merbold et al. is now available online.

Nina Buchmann, Marco Lehmann and Roland Werner attended the COST SIBAE 2013 Meeting – Challenges in the applications of stable isotopes across disciplines and scales at Wroclaw, Poland (14^th-17^th of May). Download Download Marco's poster (PDF, 1.8 MB)

Congratulations to Dennis Imer, Susanne Burri and Uli Prechsl to their successful defence of their PhD theses.

New publication by Jin Cui et al. on Phenology and gross primary production of two dominant savanna woodland ecosystems in Southern Africa with contributions from Lutz Merbold is now available in the current issue of Remote Sensing of Environment.

Newest findings of currently ongoing research in the grassland sciences group were presented during the open science conference on external page "Climate Extremes and Biogeochemical Cycles", the "external page EGU General Assembly" and the external page "Swiss Global Change Day".

A recent article on the citizen-science project "Phaenonet", including comments from Werner Eugster has been published in ETH Life.

New paper on "A functional trait-based approach to understand community assembly and diversity–productivity relationships over 7 years in experimental grasslands" by Christiane Roscher et al. with contributions from Nina Buchmann was accepted in Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics.

Matthias Haeni attended the World Forests Summit, 5^th-6^th March at Stockholm.

Sebastian Zielis became treasurer of the VM-USYS and also the representative of the VM-USYS within the departmental conference. Matthias Haeni became a member of the Teaching Commission.

New papers in Biogeosciences Discussions: "Temporal and spatial variations of CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O fluxes at three differently managed grasslands" by Dennis Imer et al. and "Winter greenhouse gas emissions (CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O) from a sub-alpine grassland" by Lutz Merbold et al.

Dr. Janos Balogh, research associate at the Institute of Botany and Ecophysiology, Szent István University Gödöllő, Hungary joined our group as a guest scientist in November 2012 until June 2013.

Our most recent publication was accepted in Remote Sensing of Environment entitled "Evaluation of MODIS gross primary production for Africa using eddy covariance data" by Martin Sjöström et al. with contributions from Lutz Merbold.