2017

Is this music?? Yes, it was! A group of ETH and Uni ZH members, from students to long-term staff members at USYS, HEST and other departments visited us on the last working day before Xmas and played Christmas carols in the LFW atrium. LFW "inhabitants" came out of their offices, listened and applauded. Thanks a lot!! (22 December 2017)

Congratulations to Neringa Mannerheim who successfully defended her doctoral thesis on "Carbon allocation between the canopy and the root system in the tropical tree Ceiba pentandra: Transfer velocity, magnitude and biotic controls" (20 December 2017).

Lukas Hörtnagl, Anna Gilgen, Annika Ackermann and Sabina Keller participated in the Treffpunkt Science City, the open public science program by ETH. Visitors could go on a virtual reality 3D tour to our group's Swiss Fluxnet tower at Davos. Moreover, they could observe the CO₂ exchange of a Swiss grassland during day and night conditions in real-time. With over 2300 visitors the event has been a great success! (26 November 2017)

At today's General Assembly of external page ICOS-RI, the observer status of Switzerland was continued. (17 November 2017)

Many group members participated actively in the external page 15th Swiss Geosciences Meeting in Davos: talks by Mana Gharun, Nina Buchmann and Carmen Emmel were complemented by posters from Lukas Hörtnagl and Philip Meier. Find the corresponding abstracts external page here. (17/18 November 2017)

The ICOS-CH Annual National Meeting took place in Davos to inform all participants about the newest developments, upgrades and the next steps in the labelling process of the ecosystem site Davos and the external page atmospheric site Jungfraujoch (17 November 2017)

Lukas Hörtnagl gave a talk at the external page SwissForestLab – LWF workshop in Birmensdorf on "Two decades of ecosystem fluxes above a sub-alpine coniferous forest in Switzerland" (31 October 2017)

Best Poster Award at the 2017 Annual Symposium of the World Food System Center of ETH Zurich went to Sergei Schaub for his poster on 'Value of species diversity in grasslands’, with contributions by Buchmann N, Lüscher A and Finger R. (25.10.2017)

At the Annual Symposium of the World Food System Center, not only science was in the focus. Many group members had prepared posters for this event. Also the changes for the Chair and the Executive Director positions were a topic at the very end of an interesting evening. It was a great time as Founding Chair of such a lively center. I wish all involved great results and lots of energy and fun to spread the news and implement the findings! (25 October 2017)

During this year's IsoCycles 2017 conference on Reaching an integrated use of stable isotopes to constrain biogeochemical nutrient cycles, Nina Buchmann gave the first keynote on "Stable oxygen and hydrogen isotopes to study ecohydrology in forest ecosystems". (16 October 2017, World Food Day)

We warmly welcome Mercedes Ibañez who joined our Grassland Sciences Group for the next two months as an academic guest from the external page University of Lleida, Spain. (16 October 2017)

Under the patronage of external page PubliFarm, the Grassland Sciences group contributed to a large exhibit at the external page Olma in St.Gallen. During a special show (external page Sonderschau), visitors could experience how to shop with biodiversity and climate change in mind, do experiments to learn more about climate change and agriculture, or listen to talks given by many group members about the links between biodiversity, agriculture and climate change (12.-22. October 2017). 

It took 15 years to collect the data and two years to write the paper. But now external page Weisser et al. is published with contributions by Nina Buchmann and many former members of the group: the 73 page synthesis paper, a whole volume of Basic and Applied Ecology, about 15 years of biodiversity research within the Jena Experiment. (September 2017)

At this year’s external page Science Communication conference in Solothurn, the Agora project PubliFarm was contributing with an exhibit on agricultural research and sustainable consumption. The same topic was addressed at the external page Scientifica in Zurich three weeks ago. (21 to 22 September)

Congratulations to Claude Herzog who successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "Growth and decay of Scots pine roots" (18 September 2017).

This week, 21 ecologists, agricultural, economic and political scientists met to discuss the Valuation of grassland species diversity and related ecosystem services in Europe. Short input statements, lively discussions in break-out groups, in the plenum and during the breaks resulted in many great ideas how to proceed and in plans what to put together as papers and projects. A great cross-disciplinary success! (11-13 September 2017)

Dr. Mana Gharun joined our group and will add additional expertise in plant ecophysiology to the group. (8 September 2017).

This year's external page Scientifica had the topic "What data can tell". Clearly our data tell us a lot, and so we told the Zurich public about our data, our research themes and approaches. During three days, our booth in the main building - with the title "external page Wald, Wiese, Acker – Treibhausgasen auf der Spur" was visited by many. A big thank you to the group members who made our exhibit a great success! (1 to 3 September 2017)

An email in May about "Research during summer?", triggered the visit of Peter Rüegg from ETH News during our field work for the Leaf2Canopy project at the Lägeren site in August. In this project we aim to understand how trees balance their use of light, water and nutrients in the canopy, and how this affects the CO₂ uptake of forests.

We warmly welcome Yujie Liu who was awarded a fellowship from the China Scholarship Council in 2017. She will work as a PhD student in the Grassland Sciences Group for the next four years (30 August 2017).

Dr. Valentin Klaus joined our group today and will add additional expertise in grassland sciences to the group. (15 August 2017)

A warm welcome to Qing Sun who will work on her PhD the next three years within the project RELOAD. (14 August 2017)

Our LERNfeld on YouTube? Yes, watch external page here. (24 July 2017)

Congratulations to Eugénie Paul-Limoges who successfully defended her doctoral thesis on "Biosphere-atmosphere CO₂ exchange and its link to sun-induced fluorescence in a mixed forest and a cropland" (28 June 2017).

The first Research Day for the public has taken place at the Schürhof farm in Aesch BL on June 10^th 2017. The event was part of the Publifarm project and has been organized by Sabina Keller. Interested lay people could learn about agriculture in the context of biodiversity and climate change with hands-on research experiments on earthworms, cows and pests. In addition, they could discuss with young scientists from ETH.

The following photos by Florine Münger; Forschungstag Schürhof Aesch 2017.

"Den Regenwürmern auf der Spur", this was the title of an article published by the Download Sarganserländer (PDF, 185 KB) newspaper on 23 Mai 2017, reporting about LERNfeld activities on a farm in Mels.

Offer to teachers within LERNfeld. On 10 June 2017, teachers can check out the teaching materials on agriculture in the context of climate change and biodiversity. external page Information can be found here (in German).

Further education within LERNfeld (for teachers at secondary school levels). Investigate the effects of climate change on agriculture with your school class. Young researchers show their results. When? Wednesday, 13 September 2017. Where? Eschikon-Strickhof.

Congratulations to Marc-André Cormier who successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "Biochemical and metabolic effects on the hydrogen isotope composition of organic compounds in plants" (5 May 2017).

The external page EGU European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2017, has been held from April 23rd until 28th in Vienna. There were poster presentations of Susanne Burri, Lutz Merbold, Philip Meier, Kathrin Fuchs, Werner Eugster, Lukas Hörtnagl, Nina Buchmann, Carmen Emmel and the ICOS-CH Consortium.

An article about ICOS Switzerland (and the funding for the next four years) has been published in the external page ProClim News. (20 April 2017).

Great news! ICOS-CH Phase 2 got funded by the SNF for the next four years! Another 4 years into the 20 years of ICOS RI!! We especially liked one statement of the reviewers when asked about scientific relevance, originality and topicality: "It is a no brainer that the observational efforts like this are absolutely essential during Anthropocene" .... We could not agree more! (30 March 2017)

Interested in communicating science to school pupils? Read a external page blog about our LERNFeld project. (13 March 2017)

New publication by Gonsamo et al. with contributions by Nina Buchmann on global phenology and its link to atmospheric ¹³CO₂  in external page Global Change Biology. Our results suggest an increase in soil respiration in the Northern Hemisphere, cancelling out CO₂ uptake gains from a longer growing season.

Globi visiting ETH and hugging ETH professors.... Read more about Globi's adventures in the new book. (2 March 2017)

The Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Pflanzenbau-wissenschaften SGPW celebrated its 25^th anniversary. At its external page annual meeting, Dr. Anna Gilgen gave an overview talk on Ökosystemleistungen von Grasland (Ecosystem services in grassland), based on results obtained in our group over the last years. (16 February 2017)

"We scientists shape science", this was the topic of a external page congress organized by SCNAT. In different workshops, current challenges were discussed and potential solutions developed. For workshop summaries and further information, click external page here. (26 & 27 January 2017)

New publication by Hofer et al. in external page Agriculture, Ecosystems and the Environment, with contributions by Nina Buchmann. Interestingly, N fertilisation improved the drought resistance of non-legumes, while legumes were not impressed by the drought. (2 January 2017)