2016
December
Amazing: our open access flux and meteo data sets from five Swiss flux sites (Chamau, Früebüel, Oensingen, Davos and Lägeren) as well as from two (closed) sites in Panama have been downloaded 523 times in 2016 alone!! Looking forward to reading great papers to which these data sets will contribute in the future.
Congratulations to Sämi Schmid who successfully defended his doctoral thesis on Impacts of climate change on alpine grassland ecosystems: responses in structure and function today! (22 December 2016).
Grassland Xmas in the LFW Lichthof - This time organized by our technical staff! Raclette cheese with young potatoes, salad and some dips, yummy. Followed by home-made desserts. Thank you !! We had a great time, with the families and many babies and toddlers..... (16 December 2016)
Impressions from the Grassland Xmas party 2016
New publication by Brinkmann et al. with contributions by Nina Buchmann, Werner Eugster on tree responses to drought published in external page Tree Physiology.
New publication by Meyer et al. with contributions by Nina Buchmann on biodiversity effects strengthening over time published in external page Ecosphere.
New publication by Blessing et al. with contributions by Nina Buchmann on resistance and recovery of beech after drought and coupling of C allocation using stable isotopes published in external page Frontiers of Plant Science.
Congratulations to Ellen Pflug who successfully defended her doctoral thesis on Response of oak and beech to simulated summer drought and drought release: ecophysiological characteristics in leaves and tree rings today! (15 December 2016).
Eugenie Paul-Limoges gave a talk on “external page Bridging the Gap from Leaf to Ecosystem Photosynthesis Using Chlorophyll Fluorescence” at the 2016 AGU fall meeting (12 December 2016).
Kathrin Fuchs gave a talk about Management matters: Testing a mitigation strategy of nitrous oxide emissions on intensively managed grassland at the Download Kolloquium Forschungsprojekte LULUCF (PDF, 191 KB) in Berne, organized by the external page Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications DETEC and the external page Federal Office of Environment FOEN. (1 December 2016)
The PSC Symposium on Pros and Cons of Synthetic Biology - co-organized by Thomas Lanners - was held in the Audimax at ETH Zurich. Speakers from Belgium, The Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland talked about Plants for Health from research to application. (1 December 2016)
Nina Buchmann was elected by the Ministry of Science, Research and Culture of Brandenburg (Germany) into the Scientific Advisory Board of the external page Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF).
November
We warmly welcome Dr. Christoph Bachofen who has joined our group as a PostDoc in the project Leaf2Canopy (15 November 2016).
"I will participate again the next time, for sure!", said one of the young researchers who coached some learning activities within LERNfeld over the last two years. Read a more detailed Download testimonial (PDF, 395 KB) (in German). (30 November 16)
Congratulations, Kathrin! The proposal for a SNF Mobility Fellowship got funded! (25 November 2016)
The external page ICOS RI labeling procedure is continuing: the Step 2 for our flux site Davos has officially started (16 November 2016).
Many members of the Grassland Sciences group presented their research at the external page Swiss Geoscience meeting 2016 (19 November 2016) in Geneva during external page Session 15 on Linking Trace Element and Carbon Biogeochemistry and external page Session 17 on Atmospheric Processes and Interactions with the Biosphere. Find their abstracts of talks and posters for external page Session 15 and external page Session 17 here.
New publication by Sándor et al. with contributions by Lutz Merbold on C and N models Intercomparison - benchmark and ensemble model estimates for grassland production published in external page Advances in Animal Biosciences.
At a project event of LERNfeld on 2 November 2016, participants could try out one of the learning activities first hand and gain the same experience as almost 800 (!!) school children over the last three years. In both cases, a full success!
Impressions from the LERNfeld closing event
October
Congratulations to Sébastien Husse who successfully defended his doctoral thesis on Effects of mixing plant species with contrasting above- and belowground traits on yield and resource capture in mown and grazed grasslands on 28 October 2016.
Susanne Burri has joined the Board of VMUSYS (Association of Academic Staff of the Department Environmental Systems Science) today, 27 October 2016, at the general assembly of VMUSYS. Thanks for your engagement for USYS and taking up the responsibility!
The external page ICOS RI labeling procedure is continuing: our flux site Davos is the first forest Ecosystem Class 1 site for which an application for Step 2 is pending (12 Oct 2016).
Roland Werner gave an invited lecture (Oral Session Molecular processes and isotopomics) on "Exploring links between measurable in-vitro isotope effects to observable in-vivo isotope fractionation in reaction networks" October, 4th, 2016 at the 8th International Symposium on Isotopomers in Nantes, France.
September
During the 2nd external page ICOS RI conference in Helsinki (27-30 September 2016), Susanne Burri, Eugenie Paul-Limoges and Lukas Hörtnagl presented their results. In addition, colleagues from University of Bern, WSL and Empa, members of ICOS-CH, provided insights into their latest research. Further info can be found external page here.
On September 27 Esther Klein and Timona Oesch from the Kantonsschule Frauenfeld visited our group for a science reportage. Sabina Keller informed them on our research topics and showed them around. Roland Werner explained the mass spectrometer and our technicians Thomas Baur, Patrick Koller and Florian Käslin showed the 3-D printer in action and the spectacular leaf grabber aerial drone. Thomas Lanners has given an interview on his research at the JENA-Experiment.
First Agro-Weekend in Agricultural Sciences (23-24 Sept. 2016): All first semester students of Agricultural Sciences 2016 were invited to spend Friday/Saturday together in Frauenfeld to get to know each other, learn about the upcoming study program and exchange with higher semester students, the study secretariat and professors. Round-table discussions with alumni, now working in different sectors, added the long-term perspective to this weekend.
On September 23, the kick-off event of PUBLIFARM took place at the FHNW in Brugg (see Download program (PDF, 1.7 MB)). Short introductory talks were given by our group members Anna K. Gilgen, Katrin Fuchs and Susanne Burri. The newspaper “Schweizer Bauer” reported on the event as well. The Agora project PUBLIFARM aims to communicate research results about the influence of agriculture on biodiversity and climate change to a broad public using a participatory and interactive approach. Sabina Keller is a member of the project team.
Impressions of the PUBLIFARM Kick-off on 23rd September 2016 in Brugg-Windisch
Congratulations to Nadine Brinkmann who successfully defended her doctoral thesis on Ecophysiological responses of four common Swiss tree species to global environmental change on 22 September 2016. Well done!!!
Great feedback on our LERNfeld project from Swiss teachers. Can one ask for more?
"Mir war nicht bewusst, dass im Boden 3x mehr C ist als in der Luft. Mehr zum Thema Landwirtschaft in der Schule ist sehr wichtig. Mir ist bewusst geworden, dass das Bild der Landwirtschaft sehr veraltet ist. Ich werde das Thema Klimawandel und Landwirtschaft ganz sicher wieder im Unterricht einbauen.“
„Ich habe sehr viel selbst gelernt, der Link Boden/Landwirtschaft und Klimawandel war mir neu – ich bin achtsamer und vom Thema fasziniert. Unbedingt wieder im Unterricht einbauen.“
„Viele Aha-Erlebnisse fachlicher Art, Neues gelernt, das ich sehr gut im Unterricht werde verwenden können, praktische Versuche sind sehr wertvoll.“
New publication by Nadine Brinkmann, Werner Eugster, Roman Zweifel, Nina Buchmann and Ansgar Kahmen on "Temperate tree species show identical response in tree water deficit but different sensitivities in sap flow to summer soil drying" published in external page Tree Physiology.
Shiva Ghiasi and Neringa Mannerheim presented their posters on Carbon isotope fractionation during leaf and root respiration as a function of nitrogen nutrition and Allocation of 13C–labeled photoassimilates within the tropical tree species Ceiba pentandra during the JESIUM 2016 conference in Gent, September 4 - 9, 2016.
The ICOS-CH Annual Meeting 2016 took place at Empa in Dübendorf on 1st September. Scientific results were presented and ongoing as well as future activities were discussed.
August
This year's retreat brought us to Hof de Planis in Graubünden (30./31.8.16). For the newcomers, it was a great opportunity to get to know the group. The hike on Tuesday brought us to Europe's highest lake with native water lilies ...
Eugenie Paul-Limoges was interviewed by FLUXNET following her AMS talk in June. Read the interview here external page http://fluxnet.fluxdata.org/2016/08/09/people-young-scientist-profile-eugenie-paul-limoges/
We warmly welcome Ying Liu who was awarded and selected by the China Scholarship Council in 2016 as joint PhD student in the Grassland Sciences Group (25.08.16).
We warmly welcome Immanuel Jaeggi as a new intern in the Grassland Sciences Group (15.08.16).
We warmly welcome Guido Bertola as the new IAESTE exchange student in the Grassland Sciences Group (15.08.16). Guido comes from Argentina and will stay 3 months with us.
And it does fly ... and cuts ... and brings them back! Florian Käslin, Thomas Baur, Patrick Koller and Petra D'Odorico tried out the group's newest toy: the so-called "leaf grabber", a drone that cuts branches of tall trees and brings them back to the operator.
Nina Buchmann gave an invited talk on external page Responses of European grasslands to drought and management practices: ecological as well as economical assessments at the 101st Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting in Fort Lauderdale, USA (5.8.16).
New publication by Alexander Milcu et al. with contributions by Nina Buchmann, Werner Eugster and Dörte Bachmann on "Plant species and functional diversity increase grassland productivity-related water vapor fluxes: a combined Ecotron and modeling approach" published in external page Ecology.
New publication by Roman Zweifel et al. with contributions by Nina Buchmannand Werner Eugster on "Are trees able to grow in periods with shrunken stems?" published in external page New Phytologist. The corresponding data are available external page here.
July
New publication by Gianluca Tramontana et al. with contributions by Lutz Merbold and Sebastian Wolf on "Predicting carbon dioxide and energy fluxes across global FLUXNET sites with regression algorithms" published in external page Biogeosciences.
New publication by Daniel Hofer et al. with contributions by Nina Buchmann on "Yield of temperate forage grassland species is either largely resistant or resilient to experimental summer drought" published in external page Journal of Applied Ecology.
New publication by Inge Juszak et al. with contributions by Werner Eugster on "Contrasting radiation and soil heat fluxes in Arctic shrub and wet sedge tundra" published in external page Biogeosciences.
New publication by Pascal Niklaus et al. with contributions by Nina Buchmann on "Plant species diversity affects soil-atmosphere fluxes of methane and nitrous oxide" published in external page Oecologia.
Inauguration of the renovated buildings at Alp Weissenstein / Crap Alv on Saturday, 9 July 2016. Many visitors followed the invitation to hear about the latest developments at the research station at Crap Alv. After some welcome speeches, visitors could go on two tours: one about science, one about the renovations.
Impressions from the inauguration at Alp Weissenstein, also called Crap Alv in Romansh
Guido Ulmi explained the renovations carried out. All materials for the renovated rooms came from the region.
June
During three days (27-29 June 2016), 12 students from four Swiss and Dutch universities got introduced into the "Application of Stable Isotopes in Plant Sciences". Lecturers from ETH Zurich, University of Basel and PSI were joined during the field trip to the external page DOK trial and the external page Hofstetten crane site by colleagues from the FiBL and Agroscope.
Impressions from the field trip on 28 June 2016
This year, the excursion on "Alpine Meadows and Pastures", took place during wonderful weather (27 June 2016). Students could learn about alpine vegetation as well as about greenhouse gas flux measurements at the Alp Weissenstein.
Impressions from the excursion to Alp Weissenstein
Kathrin Fuchs presented a poster during the external page 19th Nitrogen workshop "Efficient use of different sources of nitrogen in agriculture - from theory to practice" at Skara, Sweden 27th-29th June 2016.
Eugenie Paul-Limoges gave a talk on external page Contributions of understory and overstory to ecosystem CO2 fluxes in a temperate mixed forest in Switzerland at the 32nd Conference on Agricultural and Forest Meteorology in Salt Lake City, USA (23 June 2016).
During the month of June, many of our labs and offices at the C floor got renovated. People had to find new desks to work, the mass-spec lab was shut down, the workshop almost closed down. The rainy weather delayed some of the steps, e.g., the paint on the windows did not dry as fast as anticipated.... Now, it is the turn for offices at the A floor.... At least the weather is much better!
Renovation of our offices and labs during most of June
Isolab closed down. Packed in well against the dust. Nobody in the Isolab to answer the phone... No opportunity to use the office for more than two weeks. The new blindes go electric.... After almost four years: the cool room is being installed.
New publication by Sébastien Husse et al. with contributions by Nina Buchmann on "Larger yields of mixtures than monocultures of cultivated grassland species match with asynchrony in shoot growth among species but not with increased light interception" published in external page Field Crops Research.
1816 - The Year without Summer: The eruption of the Tambora volcano in 1815 had huge effects globally, particularly in eastern Switzerland. Low temperatures, high rainfall, bad harvests, poverty, death, and emigration. "Was wäre, wenn?" ("What if?"), asks a blog by Nina Buchmann, published within an interesting event series about this special year (20.6.16).
Visit of representatives of the cantonal parliament Solothurn at our field site Oensingen. Researchers from Agroscope and the Grassland Sciences group provided information about on-going research to a very interested group (15.6.16). Dr. Carmen Emmel presented our research concept and explained the relevance of this flux site for Switzerland as well as globally.
Impressions of the visit at Oensingen
Congratulations to Daniel Hofer! He successfully defended his doctoral thesis on “Intensively managed grassland exposed to drought - Resistance, resilience, and growth limitations of functionally different forage species" today (13.6.16).
The Isolab just carried out its 100'000th measurement with E.A. Burns, one of our mass-spectrometers running since June 2004: the δ13C was -25.44 ‰ (or mUr, as Roland prefers it....) and the δ15N was 4.65 ‰, measured during a combined 13C & 15N run on 6 June 2016. The sample was part of the project CaNiTropIs.
New publication by Marco Lehmann et al. with contributions by Nina Buchmann and Roland Werner on "Metabolic Fate of the Carboxyl
Groups of Malate and Pyruvate and their Influence on δ13C of Leaf-Respired CO2 during Light Enhanced Dark Respiration?" published in external page Frontiers in Plant Science.
We warmly welcome Dr. Susanne Burri as a new member of the Grassland Sciences Group. She will act as the new ICOS-CH coordinator (1.6.16).
May
Prof. Nina Buchmann was elected as a member of the External Advisory Board for the external page Food Security Center at University of Hohenheim, Germany.
Within the Crop Ecophysiology course, we always have a 4hr-lab & field session. This year, we were lucky with the weather and could go outside!
Impressions from the Ecophys lab, 11.5.16
New publication by Greg Tomlinson et al. with contributions by Nina Buchmann on "Can tree-ring δ15N be used as a proxy for foliar δ15N in European beech and Norway spruce?" published in external page Trees.
April
New publication by Tina Endrulat et al. with contributions by Nina Buchmann on "Carbon allocation into different fine-root classes of young Abies alba trees is affected more by phenology than by simulated browsing" published in external page PLoS ONE.
We have pushed the button! A big data folder with many data files (including metadata) on the response of grasslands to summer drought has been packed by "docuteam packer" and uploaded to the ETH long-term data archive Rosetta, the very first one at ETH Zurich (8.4.16). The data had been collected by Dr. Anna K. Gilgen during her PhD project within the NCCR Climate. Data can be freely accessed using the corresponding external page link under the Creative Commons License external page CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. This great achievement, the digital curation of the group's first dataset in Rosetta, which is also searchable through the NEBIS catalog, is the result of joint efforts by the ETH Library and the Grassland Sciences group (coordinated by Dr. Sabina Keller), carried out since 2011.
Using tea bags for science? Sure, a new experiment is just about to start at the Lägeren site. More information about the so-called external page Tea Bag Index can be found here or watch a short external page video.
Our flux site Davos is among the first European ecosystem sites within external page ICOS RI for which the Step 1 of the labeling procedure has been finished (4.4.16). Now Step 2 can start ....
New publication by Sebastian Wolf et al. on "Warm spring reduced carbon cycle impact of the 2012 US summer drought" published in external page PNAS.
We warmly welcome Manjunatha Chandregowda as a new intern in the Grassland Sciences Group (11.4.16).
New discussion paper online by Kittler et al. with contributions by Lutz Merbold entitled external page "Impacts of a decadal drainage disturbance on surface–atmosphere fluxes of carbon dioxide in a permafrost ecosystem" in Biogeosciences Discussion external page Special Issue "Changing Permafrost in the Arctic and its Global Effects in the 21st Century (PAGE21)".
ICOS-CH: New article by Lutz Merbold on "Quantifying and understanding Europe's greenhouse gas balance" published in external page ProClim-Flash
New publication by Yann Salmon et al. on "Effects of ontogeny on δ13C of plant- and soil-respired CO2 and on respiratory carbon fractionation in C3 herbaceous species" with contributions by Nina Buchmann published in external page PLoS ONE.
New publication by Mark Adams et al. on "Legumes are different: Leaf nitrogen, photosynthesis, and water use efficiency" with contributions by Nina Buchmann published in external page PNAS.
New publication by Frank Schindler et al. with contributions of Lutz Merbold entitled external page "Seasonal change of microbial activity in microbially aided bioremediation" has been published in Journal of Geochemical Exploration.
We congratulate Kathrin Fuchs for winning this year's Poster Award at the external page 17th Swiss Global Change Day in Bern (12.4.16).
March
Our research site Chamau (CH-CHA) has been running since 2005 and needed substantial restructuring. Thanks to our technical team (Thomas Baur, Florian Käslin, Philip Meier and Patrick Koller) this has been achieved in the last two weeks.
Chamau restructuring
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Chamau research site early in the morning -
Chamau with new infrastructure for data acquisition -
Chamau one of these mornings
New paper by Emmanuel Frossard with contributions from Nina Buchmann on "Soil properties and not inputs control carbon : nitrogen : phosphorus ratios in cropped soils in the long term" published in SOIL external page doi:10.5194/soil-2-83-2016
Hazel shrubs flowering in December: an indicator for global warming?! Results from a joint project PhaenoNet tries to give some external page answers.
New paper by Gianluca Tramontana with contributions from Lutz Merbold and Sebastian Wolf on "Predicting carbon dioxide and energy fluxes across global FLUXNET sites with regression algorithms", Biogeosciences Discussions external page doi:10.5194/bg-2015-661.
Long interview with ICOS-CH team members about their activities, experiences but also challenges working at the ecosystem site Davos, the first European ecosystem site for which the ICOS-RI labeling procedure has been started.
We warmly welcome Rumia Basu as a new member of the Grassland Sciences Group (1.3.16).
February
Our paper in Global Change Biology Download Frank et al. (2015) on the "Effects of climate extremes on the terrestrial carbon cycle: concepts, processes and potential future impacts" was one of 2015’s 15 most-downloaded papers!
Both external page ICOS-CH stations (external page Jungfraujoch and Davos Seehornwald) have fully applied for the external page ICOS Station Labeling procedure to become official ICOS stations. The Davos ecosystem site - run by the GL-group and partners - is the first ecosystem station in Europe that has submitted the application.external page
external page Martin Steinbacher and Lutz Merbold currently attended the ICOS Research Infrastructure Committee meeting at the Institute of Environmental Physics at University of Heidelberg, Germany. During the three-day meeting, all entities within external page ICOS discussed the future of this research infrastructure as well as the overall functioning of ICOS.
We warmly welcome Andrew Revill as a new member of the Grassland Sciences Group (1.2.16).
January
Congratulations to Bruno Gamarra for successfully defending his doctoral thesis on Monday, 25th January.
Congrats to Eugenie Paul-Limoges, who was awarded an Outstanding Student Paper Award (OSPA) for her talk at AGU in Dec. 2015
The "external page FLUXNET2015 Dataset", a synthesis dataset for global greenhouse flux studies, has just been released. We contributed data from six sites across the globe: Switzerland (Chamau, Früebüel), Panama (afforestation and pasture), Russia (wetland) and Zambia (miombo woodland).
We warmly welcome the newest Grassland Sciences Group member: Vivienne Hanke. Vivienne will spent half a year in our group as vocational trainee (4.1.16).
Have a happy and healthy 2016!