2019
December
729 coauthors - this is record! At least for Nina Buchmann who coauthored an invited paper on the external page TRY database, just published as external page online open-access version in Global Change Biology. (31 December 2019)
The Xmas Brass Band comes by each year, also this year in the LFW: playing classical as well as not so classical Xmas carols. Thanks!! (20 December 2019)
Xmas Apero of ETH Zurich: the main building as we see it very rarely! (17 December 2019)
Additional funding for ServiceGrass. Valentin received funds to dive deeper into soil services. Congrats!! (13 December 2019)
Long awaited - the "We have the ICOS Class 1 label for Davos"-Apero!! We celebrated six years of work with colleagues from WSL and the "father" of the Davos site, Ruedi Häsler! Thanks for setting up the site in the 1990ies!! (12 December 2019)
"We have the ICOS Class 1 label for Davos"-Apero
The Grassland Sciences group hosted two school classes of the primary school Stäfa. The children learned about the role of a university in society and what researchers are doing in the lab. And: the children could even become researchers themselves! At different workstations they extracted chlorophyll from leaves, observed open and closed stomates through a microscope and observed transpirative cooling of stressed versus unstressed plants. Additional highlights were the destruction of roses frozen in liquid nitrogen and the custom-made drones from our workshop.
The kids were overwhelmed and amazed by how much fun research is. Thanks to all who contributed: Sabina Keller, Annika Ackermann, Roland Werner, Markus Staudinger, and Andreas Riedl. (12 December 2019)
And other paper accepted: this time in Oecologia. Christoph Bachofen´s paper on light and VPD gradients drive foliar nitrogen partitioning and photosynthesis in the canopy of European beech and silver fir from the project L2C will be out soon. (10 December 2019)
Interested in food security and a healthy diet? Check out the latest issue of external page Uplift, published by ETH Foundation, with a contribution by Nina Buchmann. (9 December 2019)
Sergei´s next paper has been accepted by Nature Communications... right at Nikolaus-Tag! Congrats!! Here we report on plant diversity effects on forage quality, yield and revenues of semi-natural grasslands. (6 December 2019)
Miracles come true: THE BOOK is finally published..... external page Plant Ecology on 928 pages (5 December 2019)
General Assembly of the external page SwissForestLab: Vova giving the first talk on assimilating multiple observational networks into a forest ecosystem model! Well done. (5 December 2019)
Grassland Xmas: always a great opportunity to catch up with former group members, the families or just to hang out and chat with each other. Thanks Mana for taking the lead! Thanks to all who helped with the shopping, in the kitchen, with the deco, with cleaning in the end ... ! It was a great evening! (4 December 2019)
A warm welcome (back) to Ankit Shekhar who will be working as a doctoral student in the FEVER project. (1 December)
What a surprise today in the morning: an advent calendar in the coffee room!! The bags can be opened by the person who fulfills the specification.... (1 December 2019)
November
With the ICOS Class 1 label of our Davos site, also the Download excursion guide (PDF, 7.9 MB) could be updated and uploaded. Thanks, Sue!! Looks great. (28 November 2019)
Six years later, a roller coaster of emotions, new instrumentation, a completely new data acquisition system, a Premium solution, an analogue test, near real-time data submission, new plots being measured in the cold: the Swiss ICOS site Davos received the Class 1 label!!! Davos is one out of five ecosystem Class 1 sites and one of of four forest Class 1 sites. Thanks to everybody who contributed. (21 November 2019)
Nina Buchmann has been recognized as a "Highly Cited Researcher" by the Web of Science Group for the second year in a row. Highly Cited Researchers are defined as "scientists and social scientists who produced multiple papers ranking in the top 1% by citations for their field and year of publication, demonstrating significant research influence among their peers" (external page Clarivate Analytics). Papers published and cited between 2008 and 2018 were considered. Nina qualified in the cross-field category. She is one of six researchers from D-USYS (out of 18 ETH professors in total) who made it on the 2019 list. See the full list of "Highly Cited Researchers 2019" external page here. (19 November 2019)
"Grassland ecology: Ecosystem services and resilience to climate change" was the topic, Nina Buchmann gave a seminar about in the Seminar Series for Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies (SEBES) at University of Zurich. Thanks for the invitation and great discussions!! (19 November 2019)
Our group hosted five girls in the frame of the external page Nationaler Zukunftstag. The children discovered different workplaces: from the micrometeorology workshop, where our technicians explained the tree sampling drone and the 3D printing device, to the mass spectrometer lab, where they got an introduction into isotopes. Doctoral student Andreas Riedl explained the climate chamber and showed his sap flow experiment. During a morning workshop the children explored gas exchange in stressed and control plants. And in the afternoon, they extracted pigments from autumn leaves and limonene from lemon peel. The "icing on the cake" was the liquid nitrogen demonstration and preparation of shock-frozen ice cream. The event was organized by Sabina Keller with contributions from Annika Ackermann, Anna K. Gilgen, Iris Feigenwinter, Andreas Riedl, Thomas Baur, Philip Meier, Markus Staudinger and Roland Werner. Thank you for all your commitment! (14 November 2019)
Sergei´s paper is out in external page Ecological Economics!! Congrats. Economic benefits from plant species diversity are also present in intensively managed grasslands!! (6 November 2019)
The update on the external page TRY database has been accepted by GCB! Stay tuned. (3 November 2019)
October
This year´s symposium of the WFSC took place in the Audimax. The main program included keynotes and presentations on current research in the context of sustainable food systems, supporting to reach the external page Sustainable Development Goals. Leaving the WFSC team, Anna K. Gilgen has been officially thanked and bid farewell by the Executive Director. Congratulations, Anna!
Our group members Qing Sun, Yujie Liu, Valentin Klaus and Sabina Keller presented their posters at the networking session. All PDFs of the posters are available here. (31 October 2019)
Last field day of the year: Winter is approaching and the field season is slowly coming to an end. Valentin Klaus, Franziska Richter and Iris Feigenwinter went to the Chamau field station for a nitrogen measurement campaign in the course of the project SUPER-G. They took soil gas samples for isotope analysis and buried resin bags to measure nitrate leaching. Despite the rainy weather, their motivation remained high. (30 October 2019).
ETH-Klimarunde 2019: "Climate change in mountain regions - And now?" Anna K. Gilgen and Nina Buchmann answered questions about adaptation necessity of mountain agriculture. (23 October 2019)
We congratulate doctoral student Andreas Riedl again for being awarded the 2019 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award of the European Geosciences Union. Andreas received this award for his poster “Quantification of Dew and Fog Water Inputs to Swiss Grasslands” presenting his work in the IFDewS project. (22 October 2019)
Find out more external page here.
external page Science comment out: scientific discourse on climate change mitigation. (18 October 2019)
Two more synthesis papers out, based on results from the Jena Experiment: external page Eisenhauer et al. and external page Manning et al. Both papers are chapters of a new volume of Advances in Ecological Research. Check it out external page here. (11 October 2019)
Interested in teaching material on climate change? Our "Forschungsheft Klimawandel" is now openly external page available (in German only)! Check it out. (7 October 2019)
The Picarro Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy device for water vapor isotope measurements has moved to our field site Früebüel. Paul Linwood led the efforts to install the measurement inlet on the roof of the research facility. The measurements at Früebüel are part of the IFDewS subproject “Quantifying the net effect of fog and dew water on grassland plant species using artificially enriched stable isotope tracers” conducted by Yafei Li. With the water vapor isotope measurements, we can interpret the atmospheric dynamics during dew and fog nights. Before moving to Früebüel, the Picarro instrument was installed at Chamau from July 2018 to April 2019 and at Alp Weissenstein from July to September 2019. (1 October 2019)
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For the installation high up on the roof, an agricultural vehicle helped lifting the device -
Inlet installation at Früebüel -
Data are coming in. The Picarro is running.
We warmly welcome Franziska Richter to our group. In the coming years, Franziska will be working as a doctoral student in the ServiceGrass project. (1 October 2019)
September
Long established theory but no experimental evidence in sight: complementary resource use of plants in high diverse grassland mixtures. Barry et al. compiled all what we know from the Jena Experiment. But no evidence either, read the latest paper in external page Ecology. (27 September 2019)
Right on time for the start of autumn – the foggy season in many parts of the Swiss Plateau – journalist Luc Müller of the Aargauer Zeitung interviewed Werner Eugster about fog in general and about his research on the topic in particular. Among many other things, Werner explained why fog has many positive (as well as some negative) features and how he is exploring fog in his research projects Fog4Cast and IFDewS. (25 September 2019)
Solen´s article is available online: Assessment of spatial variability of multiple ecosystem services in grasslands of different intensities. Check it out external page here. (19 September 2019)
RELOAD in the spotlight: The newest issue of Globe, the magazine of ETH Zurich and the ETH Alumni, is entitled "Smart food" and puts food systems into the focus. The RELOAD project is one of the highlighted examples of ETH research working towards sustainable solutions for the food system. The article presents the motivation for the project and the research questions that the Grassland Sciences group addresses. Project PI Nina Buchmann and doctoral students Qing Sun and Yujie Liu contributed to the article.
Read the article about RELOAD in the ETH News or browse through the complete issue of Globe. (19 September 2019)
external page PubliFarm Research Day at Mönchaltorf: On the summerly Sunday, 15 September, the last PubliFarm Research Day took place at Mönchaltorf in the framework of the "vo Puur zu Puur" event. Beside other on-farm activities, the numerous visitors could experience hands-on research on different stalls. As a highlight, the Government Councillor Martin Neukom and the Director of the Department of Landscape and Nature, Dr. Marco Pezzatti were visiting the PubliFarm information stall, where they learned about the project. The PubliFarm Research Day has been organized by our group member Sabina Keller.
PubliFarm will finish at the end of the month. It has been a three-years natural science education project of the science didactics group of the education department of the University of Applied Sciences of Northwestern Switzerland (external page PH FHNW) and the Grassland Sciences Group of ETH Zurich, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). (15 September 2019)
Yesterday, this year’s ICOS-CH Annual Meeting took place at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL in Birmensdorf. The ICOS-CH consortium was updated on newest developments within external page ICOS RI and ICOS-CH, discussed on the next steps in the labelling process and made plans for the future of ICOS-CH. Eight scientific talks, both from the ICOS-CH Ecosystem and Atmosphere Community, completed the interesting program of the day. (12 September 2019)
Interested to use a new method in teaching? It is called Rich Picture Method and is easy and very useful to obtain info what students have learned and understood. Read our new paper by external page Grant et al., with contributions of Anna K. Gilgen and Nina Buchmann. (4 September 2019)
The Grassland Sciences retreat this year took place in Gais, Appenzell. A wrap-up of three years of projects, past, current and the future ones, and a session on communication were part of the two days. Not to forget a visit to a local saddlery.... (2/3 September 2019)
Retreat 2019
A warm WELCOME to Kristiina Marquardt. She will spend the next three months with as as external page IAESTE exchange student. (1 September 2019)
August
Two weeks of an intensive summer school on Food Systems in Transition just over, carried out by the WFSC within the project DEVIL. Nina Buchmann gave insights into Global Change Drivers: Biodiversity & Climate Change during a full morning (26 August 2019)
Learn more about the Grassland Sciences Group and our work in this new external page video!
The videos of the other groups of the Institute of Agricultural Sciences can be found on the external page YouTube Channel of the Department for Environmental Systems Sciences
Finally, the long-aspired email came today "We will move the final files to printer". After six years revising the first edition of the "Plant Ecology" by Schulze et al. and two years revising the many rounds of proofs (six in total), the external page 2nd edition is finally in press!!! (7 August 2019)
Nina Buchmann started her second 2-years term as Head of the D-USYS, the Department of Environmental Systems Sciences. (1 August 2019)
July
Experts on fog and dew gathered for the external page 8th International Conference on Fog, Fog Collection and Dew in Taipei, Taiwan. The Grassland Sciences Group was represented by the three doctoral students Yafei Li, Andreas Riedl and Stephanie Westerhuis, who all presented their current research. In their oral presentations about the IFDewS project, Yafei talked about the “Effect of Dew and Fog Water on Swiss Grassland with Stable Water Isotopes” while Andreas’ presentation was entitled “Quantification of Dew and Fog Water Inputs for Swiss Grasslands”. Steffi’s oral presentation explained how she is working “Towards an improved representation of fog and low stratus in high-resolution numerical weather prediction models” in the Fog4Cast project. Steffi also acted as chairperson in one of the sessions. (14-19 July 2019)
The first observational external page data product for eddy covariance fluxes at 27 ecosystem stations was released for the public. All six of our sites (Chamau, Früebüel, Alp Weissenstein, Oensingen, Lägeren and Davos) are included, covering data from the respective start of the Swiss FluxNet stations to 2018. (11 July 2019)
One more site equipped: Our custom made weather station was installed at the 7th out of a total of 10 sites for the IFDews project. This time, Paul Linwood, Andreas Riedl and Markus Staudinger were busy in Ticino near the village of Loco, at over 1000 m a.s.l. We are very happy to have this new research site in the Southern Alps – literally carved in stone. (3 July 2019)
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Digging in the stony soil is hard. -
Weather station and lysimeters installed. -
The research site is embedded in a very nice environment.
"Step back from the forest and step up to the Bonn Challenge: how a broad ecological perspective can promote successful landscape restoration" is the title of a new open-access paper by external page Temperton et al. (2019) published as an invited strategic article in Restoration Ecology, with contributions by Nina Buchmann. (3 July 2019)
June
Using plant traits to model ecosystem fluxes? This was the main question of a new paper by external page Peaucelle et al. 2019 published in Global Ecology and Biogeography, with contributions of Nina Buchmann. It turned out to be more difficult than expected..... (30 June 2019)
Exkursion at Alp Weissenstein (Crap Alv): together with colleagues from the Animal Nutrition group, Shiva Ghiasi and Valentin Klaus guided students through the research station, explored alpine grasslands and showed the setup for gas flux measurements. (28 June 2019)
Shiva Ghiasi explaining how we measure gas fluxes with Europe’s highest Eddy station on a grassland site at 1978 m asl Visiting the mobile milking parlor Peak bloom at the alpine grasslands Unclear whether the cow also enjoys the nice views towards the Albula pass
Almost 300 persons met in Zurich at the EGF-EUCARPIA external page Joint Symposium 2019 to present and discuss issues on “Improving sown grasslands through breeding and management”. Nina Buchmann gave a keynote on "Multifunctionality of permanent grasslands: ecosystem services and resilience to climate change", Sergei Schaub gave a talk on "The economic value of species diversity in intensively managed grasslands". Anna K. Gilgen, external page Kathrin Fuchs, Valentin Klaus und Iris Feigenwinter presented posters. (24-27 June 2019)
The Grassland Science Group participated at the second 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. Our lab hosted 20 girls and let them experience hands-on science. They learned about the responses of plants to drought and flooding: they measured stomatal conductance with the porometer, observed reduction in CO2 concentrations due to photosynthesis and examined stomata under the microscope. And with the thermal camera not only the plant transpiration got visible … The girls were coached by Regine Maier, Shiva Ghiasi and Sabina Keller (organizer) from our team. Here a short external page video of the entire stay. (21 June 2019)
Download Download here (JPEG, 37 KB)
Download Download here (JPEG, 44 KB)
Looking at stomata under the microscope (photo: Monika Krichel) Visualizing the data in a figure (photo: Monika Krichel)
Bury undies or rather tea bags? Why not bury both? Agroscope invited families to bury the former, Yujie Liu and Gicele Duarte buried the latter. Where? In the plots of the RELOAD project. Listen to the children (in external page German, in external page English) and read about the event (in external page German). (19 June 2019)
What a day! The ICOS-CH consortium (almost complete) visited the external page Jungfraujoch, an ICOS Class 1 atmospheric station at 3571 m asl. We learned about the history of the site, about newest results from atmospheric sciences and also enjoyed the view. (18 June 2019)
A day at the Jungfraujoch
The second annual meeting of the SUPER-G project took place in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Talks, discussions, workshops, and an excursion to Northumberland farms and Holy Island filled the four days. (11-14 June 2019)
The biannual D-USYS conference took place in Davos. Mana Gharun presented the Swiss FluxNet and data from our site Davos. We had lots of great discussions and enjoyed the three days! (5-7 June 2019)
Consequences of technical innovations posted on social media: Paul Linwood had posted pictures of his LoRaWAN set-up, developed for the IFDewS project and installed at Früebüel, on a Slack channel of external page The Things Network. Then he was contacted by external page SWITCH and asked if he could present his work as a 10 min "Lightning Talk" during a Working group meeting addressing Network and Security in Morschach. And sure, he did! Great achievement! (5-6 June 2019)
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Full set-up -
LoRaWAN
About 45 members of the Society of Experts of the German State Institutes for Forestry (external page DVFFA) visited our Candidate Class 1 ICOS Site Davos during their bi-annual meeting held in Davos. (5 June 2019)
«Nein, ich bin nicht die Sekretärin von Professor Buchmann. Ich bin Professor Buchmann.» translated as "No, I am not the secretary of Prof. Buchmann. I am Prof. Buchmann." Here the external page interview with the NZZ in Geman. Thanks for all the positive feedback I received, via Email and twitter!! (5 June 2019)
external page PubliFarm contributed with an on-farm research day at the ‘Day of Open Farms’ (external page Tag der offenen Hoftüren), by the Swiss Farmers Association (SBV). On the scenic farm Koenigs Biohof in Bern, the visitors could attend guided tours, discuss with experts and experience agricultural research collecting their own data on different booths. Sabina Keller organised the successful event! (2 June 2019)
On-farm research day in Bern
May
Two synthesis papers accepted for publication in external page Advances in Ecological Research on Mechanisms underlying the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function: Eisenhauer et al. and Manning et al., both with contributions of Nina Buchmann and former group members working in the Jena Experiment. (29 May 2019)
"external page Kleine Gase - Große Wirkung: Der Klimawandel" is the original title of a small book on "Small gases - Large effect: Climate Change", written by Nelles and Serrer. Nina Buchmann helped with the facts, as many other scientists. Meet the authors, during an external page interview with SWR3 (28 May 2019)
"AgriTech Day 2019", a busy day with lots of demonstrations, talks and booths to interact and talk about "Agriculture of the Future - Digital and Sustainable?" Many members of the Grassland Sciences group participated. Regine had the lead! Thank you, this was a lot of work! (25 May 2019)
Microbial succession on decomposing root litter in a drought-prone Scots pine forest. This is the title of external page Herzog et al. (2019) now available online (and open access) in The ISME journal, one of the Nature journals on Microbial Ecology, with contribution of Nina Buchmann (23 May 2019)
The mobile eddy flux tower within the external page NRP73 project InnoFarm moved again! Thomas Baur, Markus Staudinger and Regine Maier went to canton Solothurn for the next rotation of our instruments. Under quite wet conditions, they set up a new site in Aeschi (SO) where they are measuring greenhouse gas fluxes (CO2, CH4, N2O and water vapor) from a pea field. (8 May 2019)
April
"Zwischen Vor-Gärten und Welt-Klima" was the title of a panel discussion in Wittenbach, canton St. Gallen, Nina Buchmann contributed. (30 April 2019)
Big milestone reached in IFDewS: After one year of planning, construction, testing and calibration a custom made weather station was installed by Paul Linwood and Andreas Riedl at the field site Eschikon. This was the first out of ten weather stations that will be installed throughout Switzerland to measure dew and fog water inputs to Swiss grasslands. Some of the sites serve a special purpose, like the one in Eschikon. In cooperation with Frank Liebisch from the Crop Science Group of ETH Zurich, we will apply a remote sensing method in Eschikon to observe dew formation and to investigate possible bias effects of dew on spectral indices. (19 April 2019)
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Soil monolith with grasses that is placed inside the lysimeter -
Installation of soil moisture and soil temperature sensors -
After the installation
As a follow-up of Nina Buchmann´s talk at the Anniversary Event "30 years Vontobel Award for Agricultural Sciences" (see below, 28 March 2019), Vontobel interviewed her on the current challenges agriculture is facing. Read the interview in external page German and in external page English. (18 April 2019)
LERNfeld organized a further education day for high school teachers with contributions by Anna K. Gilgen (talk) and Sabina Keller (field workshop). During the first part of the day, the seventeen teachers were introduced to scientific advances around the topics agriculture and climate change, biodiversity and sustainable management. The second half of the day was dedicated to the demonstration of LERNfeld learning activities in the field. (15 April 2019)
We warmly welcome Florian Käslin back to the Grassland Sciences Group. Florian joins the techs until end of July while Ivo Beck is leaving the team to pursue a doctoral thesis at PSI. A big thank you and a good start to both of them. (15 April 2019)
Another successful day in the field: Paul Linwood, Markus Staudinger, Gicele Duarte Sà, and Iris Feigenwinter installed new soil sensors for the project SUPER-G at Chamau, one of our research sites. The sensors measure soil moisture and soil temperature in different depths and complement our N2O flux measurements at the same site. (12 April 2019)
This is how you do it
16´273 scientists visited the external page EGU General Assembly 2019, among many members of our group! One abstract was even highlighted in the programme of "public interest", i.e. external page Ghiasi et al. Mana Gharun gave a external page talk and organized a session on external page Scaling terrestrial ecosystem carbon and water response from leaf to continent with observations and simulations, in which Christoph Bachofen had a external page poster, Volodymyr Trotsiuk had a external page poster, as well as Andreas Riedl presented a external page poster. Lukas Hörtnagl co-convened a session on external page Greenhouse gas budgets from managed ecosystems, and Yujie Liu gave her first external page talk at an international conference! Also Qing Sun presented a external page poster, Regine Maier presented a external page poster. Yafei Li had a external page poster as well and Lukas Hörtnagl gave his external page talk. Last but not least, Valentin Klaus reported on our outreach experiences in a external page poster.
And the best at the end: The 2019 Outstanding Student Poster and Pico (OSPP) Award of the EGU is awarded to Andreas Riedl for his poster Quantification of Dew and Fog Water Inputs to Swiss Grasslands, presenting first results of the IFDewS project.
The external page NZZ accompanied a group of gymnasium students during their LERNfeld learning activity on a farm. This specific group studied the chewing behavior of ruminating cows and analyzed cow dung. Through the different LERNfeld external page learning activities and tutored by a young researcher, school students learn about climate change, agriculture and biodiversity and get first hand exposure to environmental sciences methods. (10 April 2019)
Big recognition for the LERNfeld project: The successful education and outreach project of the Grassland Sciences group in collaboration with external page GLOBE Switzerland and several other partners is highlighted in the teaching section of ETH Zurich's 2018 Annual Report. (April 2019)
A warm welcome to Dr. Anna K. Gilgen who takes over new tasks in our group: as Management and Research Assistant! (1 April 2019)
March
Plant species richness effects on consumer species richness are consistently positive and mediated by structural and functional diversity of the plant communities. These are the key findings of the Schuldt et al. (2019 paper to which our group contributed. Read more (open access) in external page Nature Communications. (29 March 2019)
"Nachhaltigkeit und Landwirtschaft – Ein Widerspruch?" (Sustainability and Agriculture – A Contradiction?) was the title of Nina Buchmann´s keynote at the Anniversary Event "external page 30 years Vontobel Award for Agricultural Sciences". Her answer: "No!" (28 March 2019)
"This manuscript by Mannerheim et al. is an overdue paper on analytical challenges when measuring isotopically enriched samples with high precision and accuracy...", wrote one of the reviewers and we could not agree more. The paper is accepted and will come out soon in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry. (27 March 2019)
Lukas Hörtnagl attended a RINGO work package meeting in Southampton to discuss non-CO2 eddy covariance fluxes and to develop recommendations on how to best process these fluxes within external page ICOS. He also attended the RINGO Annual Meeting that took place at the same location. Next, Lukas travelled to Trinity College Dublin where he gave an invited talk on "Swiss FluxNet - Insights and Challenges from 20 years of flux measurements". The talk was followed by lots of discussions with students and scientists about future and past challenges. (22 March 2019)
Nicole Staubli gave her Farewell Znüni today: she will leave us end of the month and take on new challenges! We wish her all the best and will keep in contact. Promised! (18 March 2019)
At the Long-term Forest Ecosystem Research (external page LWF) Meeting at WSL in Birmensdorf doctoral student Andreas Riedl informed about the project goals of IFDewS. Within this project, dew and fog water yields of grasslands will be measured at ten field sites throughout Switzerland. Three of the sites - Nationalpark, Beatenberg and Vordemwald - are part of the LWF sites. At every site a setup of three lysimeters combined with a leaf wetness sensor, soil- moisture and temperature sensors, visibility sensor and an optical rain sensor will be installed. The representatives of the LWF meeting have assured their support for this project. (8 March 2019)
In today´s lab meeting we decided to upload postprints of all our papers published since 2017 in the ETH Zurich Research Collection! A postprint is the accepted manuscript after the peer review process, without the publisher´s layout. Although we often publish in open access journals - about one third of all our papers since 2012 - the other two thirds of our papers are hidden behind paywalls. Well, this will change! The postprints will be available after the respective embargo periods of the publishers have passed (typically between 2 and 36 months). Thus, the old papers will become available as soon as we upload them. Thanks to the team!! (7 March 2019)
February
Congrats to Eugenie Paul-Limoges! Her external page PSC proposal was accepted. In the next 18 months, we will be collaborating on "Improved measurements of plant transpiration for sustainable agricultural water use". Measurements will be done at our arable Swiss FluxNet site Oensingen. (27 February 2019)
An another Oensingen paper was published: Revill et al. in external page Field Crops Research . The SPA model was used to estimate carbon fluxes of our cropland site. (23 February 2019)
Long interview in the Download Schweizer Familie (PDF, 2 MB) with Nina Buchmann. Read why she says "Nobody can rescue the world all alone." (21 February 2019)
Interested to carry out a Bachelor or Master thesis in our group? Check out the new topics, updated today. (16 February 2019)
Winter event at Flumserberg: great fun for all, despite an injury. (14 February 2019)
Our Oensingen site made it on the cover page of external page Functional Plant Biology!!! What an honour. More details can be read in D'Odorico et al. on Vertical patterns of photosynthesis and related leaf traits in two contrasting agricultural crops. (7 February 2019)
Another paper is out: Besnard et al. about Memory effects of climate and vegetation affecting net ecosystem CO2 fluxes in global forests - to be read in external page PLoS One (6 February 2019)
Another paper is out: Carmen Emmel contributed to a Response to the Editor about Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence exhibits a universal relationship with gross primary productivity across a wide variety of biomes - to be read in external page Global Change Biology (4 February 2019)
And yet another lab course started on a Friday: the Specialized Lab Module on Plant and Ecosystem Physiology, together with the group of Prof. Achim Walter. For six days, Bachelor's students of Agricultural Sciences will learn to be "climate and plant performance detectives" .... (1 to 7 February 2019)
January
A new paper is out with contribution of Nina Buchmann: Roscher et al. about Functional composition has stronger impact than species richness on carbon gain and allocation in experimental grasslands, published in PLoS One external page https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0204715 (31 January 2019)
Our Annual Academic Achievements report 2018 gives us some interesting numbers:
- 551 students taught in 2018,
- 456 grades given in 2018,
- 10 active PhD students (by the end of the year),
- 4 PhD students finished in 2018,
- 18 active grants in 2018, and
- an outstanding number of publications….. 54 !!! This is the record high since this group exists.
Thanks a lot: great team, great fun, great success.
Webinar!? Ever taken one? Quite a special event. As an active participant you sit in front of your computer, give a talk to an audience you cannot see, answer questions which you cannot hear since they come in on the screen.... Nina Buchmann has participated in (her first) webinar (ever) organized by external page Swiss Re Institute on "The European food industry: Increasing resilience and strengthening food security". (30 January 2019
Our IsoEcology course took place with many external lecturers and a great group of highly motivated Master's students and PhD students. From Friday to Friday, lectures in the morning, labs in the afternoon, a group presentation on the last afternoon. Quite some highlights, the students even guessed the right wild animal from Kenia based on d13C in hair: a giraffe. (18 to 25 January 2019)
"Was essen wir morgen? Das Welternährungssystem" was the title of a talk Nina Buchmann gave for about 100 persons at the external page University for Retired Persons at Schaffhausen. Even the local TV station was interested and interviewed her for the show "external page Hüt im Gschpröch". (14 January 2019). Also the Schaffhauser Nachrichten, the local newspaper, was present and published an Download article (PDF, 741 KB) about the talk. (16 January 2019)
Another paper is out: Stieger et al. published their study how to apply carbon isotopes to partition CH4 fluxes in the Reuss valley. Read the newest success story in external page Isotopes in Environmental & Health Studies (online, 9 January 2019).
We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Christopher Williams as a guest professor for seven months from Clark University, Worcester MA, USA. (9 January 2019)
Open data access, an issue we pursue in our group since long. Last year, our flux data from the Swiss FluxNet sites were downloaded 1907 times, compared to 1853 times in 2017 and 1062 times in 2016. This means we had about 159 downloads per month in 2018, since the external page Fluxnet2015 dataset has been made available!! (4 January 2019)
Have a happy and healthy 2019!
