2018

The AGU Honors 2018 Ceremony took place during the external page AGU Fall meeting in Washington, DC. Nina Buchmann became a Class of 2018 external page AGU Fellow, in honor of her scientific achievements and leadership. (12 December 2018)

Our group became an official member of the external page SwissForestLab, a research platform and infrastructural network. (5 December 2018)

The ICOS-CH Consortium and some invited guests met again for the Administrative ICOS-CH Annual Meeting, this year in Berne at the House of Academies (30 November 2018)

Finally, after many years of discussions and feedbacks on drafts, pre-final drafts, final drafts, improved final drafts, 14 papers have been published in the journal external page International Agrophysics with the long-awaited protocols of external page ICOS-RI. Many of the group, involved in ICOS-CH, are coauthors. Congrats for all this endurance and great work!! (30 November 2018)

Nina Buchmann has been identified as "Highly Cited Researcher 2018" by Clarivate Analytics. Highly Cited Researchers are those in the top one percentile of all citation counts in their respective fields, based on Web of Science. The time period of 2006 to 2016 has been considered. Nina Buchmann qualified in the cross-field category. She is one of seven researchers at D-USYS, out of 18 at ETH Zurich. See the full list external page here. (26 November 2018)

The new info board in Davos is finally installed (15 November 2018)

The annual meeting of our Belmont Forum project DEVIL, Delivering Food Security on Limited Land, took place in Ubatuba, in Brazil. All partners shared their newest results and data, detailed plans for further analyses, papers, the next summer school (organized by the WFSC) and outreach were discussed. (5-7 November 2018)

Im Projekt LERNfeld wird versucht, die Download Landwirte für einen sorgsamen Umgang mit Biodiversität zu motivieren (PDF, 1.4 MB).(October 2018)

"Effect of environmental conditions on sun-induced fluorescence in a mixed forest and a cropland" published by Eugénie Paul-Limoges et al. in external page Remote Sensing (24 October 2018)

Our Agora project PubliFarm has been covered by the D-USYS news! (19 October 2018)

WP2 meeting of the SUPER-G project on permanent grasslands in Wageningen (NL): interesting, fun, tiring, lots of info provided on the excursion to Dutch grasslands on peat soils and many new ideas for work to follow up. (17-19 October 2018)

As last year, the Grassland Sciences group participated in the external page OLMA 2018, the Swiss Fair for Agriculture and Nutrition in St. Gallen. This time we showed a Virtual Reality movie about the carbon budget of a cropland, based on data of our flux site Oensingen and programmed together with the Zurich University of the Arts external page ZHfK. (11-21 October 2018)

Also research stations need a makeover sometimes, so Markus Staudinger and Iris Feigenwinter went to Chamau to dig out old and broken soil sensors to prepare the station for the project SUPER-G. While digging holes of 1 meter depth, they met the reason why some of the sensors did not work anymore… (11 October 2018)

And this defense by Kathrin Fuchs on 27 September 2018 was also an anniversary for Nina Buchmann: 50 doctoral students successfully finished under her supervision during her career. Thus, she brought a yummy chocolate cake for Kathrin who looked rather suprised at the candles saying "50" .....    

And yet another successful thesis finished: congratulations to Kathrin Fuchs who defended her thesis on "Mitigation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Intensively Managed Grassland". (27 September 2018)

Congratulations to Shiva Ghiasi: She successfully defended her doctoral thesis on "Carbon isotope fractionation during leaf and root respiration as a function of nitrogen nutrition". (21 September 2018)

The external page 48th Annual Meetng of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland took place in Vienna this year. And Nina Buchmann was invited to give one of the external page keynotes. Her topic: Grassland ecology and sustainable management, friends or foes? (10-14 September 2018)

Several group members attended the external page 3rd ICOS Science Conference in Prague and gave posters (Sue Burri, Lukas Hörtnagl) and talks (Mana Gharun, Philip Meier) or just listened and networked (Nina Buchmann). It was great to see the progress in science and data sharing! (11-14 September 2018)

Forschungstag at external page KULINATA within our project PubliFarm on a farm close to the city of Berne. In the morning we hosted a school class and in the afternoon, the event was open to the public  (12 September 2018)

Valentin Klaus together with colleagues from Germany (Kathrin Kiehl) and Estonia (Lena Neuenkamp) organized a session on urban restoration at the external page European Conference on Ecological Restoration held in Reykjavik, Iceland. Besides a number of interesting talks, the session also brought up intense discussions on how “urban ecological restoration” can be clearly defined and how to facilitate practical approaches and knowledge transfer (9-13 September 2018)

"Integrated management of a Swiss cropland is not sufficient to preserve its soil carbon pool in the long term" published by Carmen Emmel et al. in external page Biogeosciences. (6 September 2018)

The next step towards the Class 1 labeling is done: we submit near-real time data from our forest site Davos to the Ecosystem Thematic Center of external page ICOS RI!! A big thank you to all who made this possible!! (27 August 2018)

The external page National Climate Observing System inventory has been updated by GCOS this year. Read the two Download pages (PDF, 835 KB) about our Swiss FluxNet network. (24 August 2018)

Below-ground resource partitioning alone cannot explain the biodiversity–ecosystem function relationship! No experimental evidence for resource complementarity based on tracer studies. Read about these findings by Jesch et al. and the Jena Experiment in external page Journal of Ecology (21 August 2018)  

The first summer school of the external page Swiss Forest Lab is currently on-going in Davos. Werner Eugster and Mana Gharun introduced the 25 international students to our flux site at Davos during the first day´s excursion on 19 August 2018. Nina Buchmann gave a talk about "Ecosystem carbon dynamics: Fluxes, C sequestration and reactions to the environment". (19 to 24 August 2018)

Class of 2018 AGU Fellow: Nina Buchmann was recognized for her "visionary leadership and scientific excellence which have fundamentally advanced research in biogeosciences". This honor was announced by the external page American Geophysical Union on 9 August 2018.

LERNfeld

Wissenschaftler für einen Tag (18 July 2018)

Grass-fed livestock – a climate solution? Watch a video on external page Grazed and Confused? which sets out to answer the question: Can grazing livestock help to mitigate climate change? If so, by how much? A product of our joint project DEVIL. (4 July 2018)
 

We warmly welcome Xingyu Hu,  who is a Bachelor student at Tsinghua University, Beijing in China. She joined our group for an internship for 2 months. (2 July 2018)

The Grassland Sciences group participated at the Kangaroo goes Science Day.The hundred best girls of class level seven who had taken part in the Kangaroo Mathematics Competition in March were invited to visit ETH Zurich. Twenty four of those visited our lab to experience hands-on science. They learned about the responses of plants to drought and flooding: they measured stomatal conductance, observed reduction in CO₂ concentrations due to photosynthesis and examined stomata under the microscope. The girls were coached by Annika Ackermann, Anna K. Gilgen and Sabina Keller from our team. Watch a short movie external page here. (22 June 2018)
 

"Tackling food system challenges through experiential education", this is the title of a new publication by Grant et al. in external page Gaia in which we describe our approach to and design criteria for summer schools about the World Food System. Experiences of many summer schools carried out by the WFSC and our DEVIL project helped to identify the most critical aspects. (20 June 2018)

We warmly welcome Gicele Silva Duarte Sa, who is in her 10^th period of the Environmental Engineering Bachelors program of the University of the State of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Within her external page IAESTE exchange program, she joined our group for an internship of 5 and half months. (19 June 2018)

The kick-off meeting of our new H2020 project SUPER-G on SUstainable PERmanent Grassland systems and policies was held in Lisbon, Portugal. Lots of info, new colleagues and a great field trip to the Alentejo region with their Montado systems (cork oaks over pasture) was an excellent start. (13 to 15 June 2018)

It is done: The laser spectrometer for CH₄ and N₂O measurements and the IRGA for CO₂ and H₂O vapor fluxes have been installed at Oensingen, together with its own mobile eddy-covariance tower. Our tech team has worked hard to start the measurements for InnoFarm. We are curious how these non-CO₂ fluxes at a cropland compare to those at Chamau, a grassland, where we measure them since 2012. In particular, Regine is happy, the PhD student in InnoFarm. (14 June 2018)

The 3^rd Research Day for the public within PubliFarm has taken place at the farm of Reto Widmer in Heimiswil, 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. Read a short article of the regional external page newspaper (in German) (9 June 2018)

Interested in trait-based analyses of biodiversity in grasslands? Read our newest paper from the Jena Experiment, Roscher et al. (2018) which just was published in external page Oikos. (1 June 2018)

What a great day for ICOS Switzerland, in particular for the external page atmosphere team: external page Jungfraujoch has received the ICOS Class 1 label! (31 May 2018)

Ying Liu's paper about water and salt stress on two wetland plants just got accepted in external page Science to the Total Environment! Congrats!! (26 May 2018)

We warmly welcome Kritika Grover, 2^nd year Chemical Engineering student at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, who joined our group for an internship of 2 months. (15 May 2018)

A warm welcome to Iris Feigenwinter, the new PhD student in the SUPER-G project which starts in June. Iris will work on greenhouse gas exchange in permanent grasslands and be responsible for the N₂O mitigation experiment initiated within Models4Pastures at Chamau. (1 May 2018)

And another successful outreach event within the InnoFarm project - this time as a "Flurbegehung" in the Niederamt, also in the canton of Solothurn. Even the Swiss radio SRF 4 was there to report about our plans: external page Listen how excited they were, particularly about the drone flights. (19 April 2018)

"Was essen wir morgen - Das Welternährungssystem" (What do we eat tomorrow - The world food system") was the topic of today´s afternoon talk by Nina Buchmann in the external page Senioren-Kolleg Liechtenstein in Mauren. She was also interviewed about the topic by external page 1FL.LI, the Liechtenstein TV station. (19 April 2018)

LERNfeld introduces teachers to scientific advances around the topics agriculture and climate change, biodiversity and sustainable management. Ten teachers were present at the latest event, hopefully more to come in September, when this event is repeated. (13 April 2018)

Nina Buchmann spent a day at external page JRC in Ispra to discuss a new PhD program to be established between the Joint Research Center and European universities, including ETH. Discussions with the external page soils group focussed on greenhouse gas emissions. More to come. (13 April 2018)

Many group members joined the external page EGU General Assembly 2018 in Vienna. Carmen Emmel, Werner Eugster, Mana Gharun, and Regine Maier gave talks or presented their posters and got feedback to their science. (9 to 13 April 2018)

Finally, the new laser for mobile CH₄ and N₂O flux measurements arrived today. We will employ it within InnoFarm as soon as it is up and running, first at Oensingen. (10 April 2018)

The last meeting of the CSPR, the Committee on Scientific Planning and Review of ICSU, the International Council for Science, took place in Paris 5 and 6 April 2018. Nina Buchmann joined in lots of discussions and a look forward, since ICSU merges with its sister-council, the external page ISSC in July this year ...

Outreach to farmers engaged in our project LERNfeld. Sabina Keller introduced the learning activities on extreme events. This is the 4^th year of LERNfeld and more than 50 school classes implemented one of the 17 learning activities at a farm in Switzerland. (5 April 2018)

15 years of the Grassland Sciences group, as of 1 April 2018 (no joke....). Lots of fun with former and current group members as well as partners, new insights and scientific achievements, but also a great deal of efforts and energy over the last 15 years.

Here some amazing numbers:

• 110 persons worked in our group since 2003
• 43 PhD students finished successfully since 2003
• 35 Bachelor & Master students finished successfully since 2003
• 18 apprentices were trained since 2005
• 133 courses were taught since 2010
  
• 3989 students were enrolled in these courses since 2010
• About 70 projects have been carried out since 2003
  
• Almost 550 papers were published by our group since 2003

A big THANK YOU to all who contributed. I enjoyed it and still do!! (1 April 2018)

A crop is not a crop. In a new paper (external page Adams et al. 2018 in New Phytologist), we show that WUE was tightly coupled to leaf N_area for agricultural legumes and nonlegume dicots, but not for cereal crops.Thus, breeding efforts in legumes can reduce water needs. (March 2018)

A new paper on growth trends in beech and fir over the last 100 years published in external page Science of the Total Environment with contributions from Volodymyr Trotsiuk. (30 March 2018)

Welcome to Esther Ravelhofer who will help us with administration during the time when Nicole enjoys Japan. (28 March 2018)

Group members of the InnoFarm project participated in a "Flurbegehung" in the Wasseramt and informed the farmers how we would like to collaborate with them. The Newsletter of the "Solothurner Bauernverband" wrote about it. (22 March 2018)

Lots of discussions during this year's Annual RINGO meeting which took place in Antwerp, Belgium. (20 to 22 March 2018)

"Will you contribute to our InnoFarm project?", was the question we asked the farmers present at the 101^th General Assembly of the Landwirtschaftlicher Verein Niederamt. external page Read here what they said. (15 March 2018)

A warm welcome to Andreas Riedl, the new PhD student in the IFDewS project. Together with Yafei Li, he will test relevance of dew for grasslands. (15 March 2018)

Synthesis of ecosystem CO₂, N₂O, and CH₄ fluxes from 14 managed grassland sites, including Chamau, shows that although grassland management led to increased N₂O and CH₄ emissions, the CO₂ sink strength was generally the most dominant component of the annual GHG budget. Read the full story in Hörtnagl et al. (2018) published in external page Global Change Biology. (8 March 2018)

Great new report from Food Matters on "external page Is Climate Change a Risk to Global Grazing Lands?", coauthored by Anna K. Gilgen, within the DEVIL project. (2 March 2018)

Congrats!! This year's external page Phil.Alp Award for the best Master's thesis went to Markus Staudinger, one of the newest members of our group. His thesis was about browsing damage of Alnus viridis by livestock. (2 March 2018)

We warmly welcome Yafei Li who will work on her PhD within the project IFDews for the next four years in our Grassland Sciences Group (1 March 2018).

We warmly welcome Regine Maier who will work on her PhD the next three years and will work within the project InnoFarm (28 February 2018).

We warmly welcome Markus Staudinger who will work as a technician the next two years in the Grassland Sciences Group. He will work within the project InnoFarm (28 February 2018).

Successful start: The kick-off meeting of our joint project Forest Growth attracted 27 participants from the external page Swiss Forest Lab and was able to clarify many open questions on data availability and data access as well as next steps forward. (6 February 2018)

We warmly welcome Marvin Sarbach who joined our Grassland Sciences Group as an apprentice (5 February 2018).

It has finally started: the ETH Climate Programme for sustainable catering. With the help of former Grassland Sciences member Dr. Dörte Bachmann, a concept for sustainable solutions in regard to food on campus has been developed together with the World Food System Center and ETH Sustainability. The aim is to reduce the CO₂-eq emissions by 10% within the next three years! (17 January 2018)

Finally, our newest synthesis paper of the Jena Experiment has been published. In external page Meyer et al. (2018) we can show that biodiversity–multifunctionality relationships strongly depend on the identity and the number of measured functions. (8 January 2018)

We warmly welcome Volodymyr Trotsiuk  who joined our Grassland Sciences Group as a Postdoctoral researcher in a project on data assimilation, together with the external page Swiss Forest Lab (8 January 2018).

Open data access, an issue we pursue in our group since long. Last year, our flux data from the Swiss FluxNet sites were downloaded 1853 times, up from 1062 times in 2016. This means we had about 154 downloads per month in 2017, since the external page Fluxnet2015 dataset has been made available!! (4 January 2018)