2020

A very special year almost came to its end. A year which indeed brought its special challenges, for lab and field work, for writing proposals and papers, for meetings and teaching. Infection cases, health system conditions and thus Master Plans and federal regulations changed frequently, but we managed!

We managed the lock down, the very first extra-ordinary lab meeting to discuss emergency activities, the two Applications for lab/field maintenance under emergency mode for maintenance of our sites, the field safety protocol, the stop of intensive field campaigns, then the Return Plan, with room occupancy signs on doors, the chore to fill out lab journals correctly and in time, the quick take-up of field campaigns, attending virtual conferences and pre-recording talks, you name it. The year clearly demanded more flexibility, innovative solutions and team spirit than ever before! We called it “dynamic priority setting over time” in 2018, well, it was fully needed and implemented this year. And we have done very well. I am proud of the commitment and spirit I saw and still experience, all your support and good ideas.

This year, it became particularly obvious that we need each other. Maybe some of you will remember one of the questions during your job interview “Which activities do you rather want to do by yourself, which ones in a team?”. There was no right or wrong answer. But this year it became clear that even “analysing data”, “writing a paper” or “designing and building something” is much easier and even needs the quick feedback, the fast answer to a question or simply the immediate reassurance “yes, this is fine, you go in the right direction, …”. This was not possible so easily this year, but even this challenge we overcame – together.

Despite all these challenges, 2020 also stands for (many) publications being accepted, some coming back with revisions, some large proposals being accepted which will keep up busy as projects in the coming years, new jobs offered and accepted, and invitations to maybe new positions pending. 2020 also showed what great team members we have. THANK YOU. Despite this stressful year, it is the team which makes work in the Grassland Sciences group enjoyful. It is a great pleasure to work with you all. (24 December 2020)

Good news in the last days of 2020: not only the project, but also the fees for ICOS-CH Phase 3 are granted! (22 December 2020)

Our Master's student Julian Rogger and his Master's thesis on the effect of weather extremes on CO₂ fluxes on permanent grassland analysing 15 years of eddy covariance flux measurements at our research site Früebüel are highlighted in the most recent edition of the Download GLOBE (PDF, 7.4 MB) magazine (check page 22). Well done, Julian. (18 December 2020)

This year's Grassland Xmas party was quite different: no joint dinner, no family members, no former members, no collaborators. Corona changed everything this year. But with the help of Regine, Andreas and Markus, supported by Anna, we still had a great time together, via Zoom, with water, wine and Glühwein, ... even Santa came by and asked some tricky questions. The later the evening, the more Zoom filters were tested (at least by those with the most current version of Zoom). A big THANK YOU to the organizers! (10 December 2020)

Congrats to Valentin Klaus!!! His Habilitation with the thesis Biodiversity in urban and agricultural grasslands: drivers, effects on ecosystem functioning and perspectives for conservation and the talk Urban grasslands for nature and people has been accepted not only by the department, but was also granted by the rector!! Great news!!! (9 December 2020)

Is agriculture a climate killer, a climate victim or a climate solution? This was the topic of a short input by Nina Buchmann at this year's external page Paris Apero, organized by the WWF Switzerland. (7 December 2020)

"Ho Ho Ho, the Grassland Santas are back :-). This year was a special one and that is why we also had to adapt our new Christmas tradition from last year. Please follow the link to our first online Grassland advent calendar. Each day is filled with a nice memory of the past year. Thanks to everyone for keeping up the spirit. You are great! Enjoy the first snowfall which we of course are also responsible for!". This was the text of an email sent by the Grassland Santas to all of us. What a great idea! Complementing the hardcover advent calendars sent out to all group members. Check out some of the impressions below. (1 December 2020)

"The End!! We finally finished our vpd experiment! Given our professional cleaning skills, the chambers were clean in no time ;)", said the tweet of Marco Lehmann (@Lehmann_Lab). Great that the VPD experiment in our climate chambers worked out! Looking forward to the results! (30 November 2020)

Art meets science in the lab: What do small glass vials do in large glass vials? Franziska Richter measures carbonate content in soil samples of the ServiceGrass project with an easy but fascinating approach using hydrochloric acid. The acid turns the carbonate into CO₂. This increases the pressure in the vials, which can be measured to calculate the original inorganic soil carbon content. Clever, isn’t it? We got great help of people from the Sustainable Agroecosystems group, thank you. (16 November 2020)

The field and lab measurements of an N₂O isotope sampling campaign conducted in September and October within SUPER-G are completed! Iris Feigenwinter took gas samples from soil chambers at Chamau and measured them with an N₂O isotope Picarro at external page Empa. The aim is to investigate N₂O source processes using stable isotopes. Lots of data collected - now it is time for analysis! (13 November 2020)

Great honor for one of our recent publications. The paper entitled "The results of biodiversity–ecosystem functioning experiments are realistic" with contributions of Valentin Klaus and Nina Buchmann made it to the cover of this month's issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution. external page Check it out. In this paper, the authors compared experimental plant communities from long-term grassland experiments with real-world grassland communities to test whether results from experiments are realistic and can be applied to real systems. Find out about the results external page here. (1 November 2020)

Ever wondered about the biodiversity of golf courses? Lean more about it in the free international Download webinar (PDF, 367 KB) on the "Biodiversity of golf courses and urban grasslands" hosted by STERF and NIBIO. Valentin Klaus will give a talk on the biodiversity and restoration of urban grasslands on 5 November. external page Register and take part! (30 October 2020)

Our group could glimpse behind the scene at the headquarters of external page Rega. It was an impressive guided tour on the history of the foundation and their cutting edge rescue technology. A visit of the aircraft hangar and the operations control center completed the interesting tour. (6 October 2020)

Spectacular efforts by the Davos forest service, on the external page ground and in the external page air. A tall spruce tree toppled over, hanging in the gye wires of the Davos tower and leaning against the hut. Now tower safety is being checked... (6 October 2020)

Good news: The tower is safe, we can climb it again! (19 October 2020)

The second soil sampling campaign for the ServiceGrass project is finally completed! Between 24 August and 30 September, Franziska Richter, together with Jean-Marc Delore and Bachelor's students Louisa Wyss and Veronica Buchmann, took soil samples for carbon stock and root biomass and buried tea bags on the 92 grassland plots across the Canton of Solothurn. (2 October 2020)

We also got funding for a SNF project on COS and below-canopy fluxes at our two forest sites within the Swiss FluxNet. Here, one of the reviewers wrote "... it is clear that this group knows what they are doing." Thanks, highly appreciated!! (24 September 2020)

Back in June 2018, our group visited the external page Baumwipfelpfad in Mogelsberg. When we later learned about the small white-leaved beech tree growing there, we offered to analyze some its special leaves in our IsoLab. Now, the external page Schweizer Bauer took up a news item of the Baumwipfelpfad and reported our findings: The albino beech is fed by its neighbors. (21 September 2020)

Our Flying Tree Top Sampler continues helping to keep up hope for the survival of the Hawaiian ‘Ōhi‘a lehua trees (Metrosideros polymorpha). external page Ryan Perroy and his team have adapted the drone developed by the Grassland technicians to serve their local challenge. Read about the problem with the deadly fungus external page here or learn more about Ryan's research in external page this article from earlier this year. (16 September 2020)

And the winner is: Sabina Keller!! Sabina won the first prize in the category Solutions of the external page 2020 competition of Die Junge Akademie which sought visions and solutions for a sustainable society. Sabina´s external page submission takes a critical look at travel as a consumer good (in German). The jury was particularly impressed by the clever interplay of real and virtual holiday experiences. We are impressed by the timeliness and the great idea how virtual travel can be fun, environmentally friendly, economical AND entertaining!! Well done, Sabina! What travel did you book next? (7 August 2020)  

Soil sampling for microbial biomass took Iris Feigenwinter, Shiva Ghiasi and student helper Severin Henzmann to our three grassland stations Chamau, Früebüel and Alp Weissenstein. In addition, they installed chambers for N₂O isotope measurements in the course of the project SUPER-G at Chamau. At Alp Weissenstein, they took extra soil samples for addressing the carbon stocks at our highest eddy site at 2000 m a.s.l. (05 - 06 August 2020)

Representative democracy needs persons who take over responsibility: Anna Gilgen and Valentin Klaus do just this. They both serve ad interim in the IAS Council, representing administrative and scientific staff. New tasks of the Council will probably follow! (15 July 2020)

We now have a continuous water potential measurement at Früebüel. Markus Staudinger and Andreas Riedl installed a soil and leaf water potential measurement system. The system was installed at Früebüel for the project IFDewS. The goal is to observe water stress relieve of grasslands caused by dew formation. Two matrix potential sensors were installed together with a leaf psychrometer to continuously measure water potentials. (9 July 2020)

New responsibilities for two team members: Ankit, currently SRP (Site Responsible Person) for the above-canopy eddy-covariance system at Lägeren also takes over the below-canopy system. Werner takes back the SRP task for Alp Weissenstein. A big thank you to both!! (6 July 2020)

Not our normal business: helping YouTubers to address the impacts of our daily food. Nina Buchmann gave advice to the makers of "Sollten alle Menschen Veganer werden?" from the YouTube content network "funk" of ARD & ZDF, the two public TV stations in Germany. Check out the external page video for the answers (11:15 min; in German only). (24 June 2020)

At today's member assembly of the ATUSYS, Thomas Baur was elected as a delegate of the administrative and technical employees of D-USYS. Thank you very much for your commitment and congratulations, Thomas! (23 June 2020)

So much soil! Franziska Richter successfully finished an intensive soil sampling campaign for the ServiceGrass project. With the help of many other group members, almost 100 organic and conventional grasslands across the Canton of Solothurn were sampled. (19 June 2020)

This week, Regine Maier joined Quirina Merz for the first drone flight within the external page NRP73 project InnoFarm at our maize field in Aeschi (SO). We successfully conducted two flights, one with a 5-band multispectral camera and one with a high-resolution RGB camera over a 50 ha area. (2 June 2020)

Peas in the focus of greenhouse gas research (Download Die Erbse im Fokus der Treibhausgasforschung (PDF, 522 KB)), this is the content of a short article by Regine Maier, reporting about her work in Aeschi within the InnoFarm project. (May 2020)

Application of prescribed burning (PB) for reducing forest fuel levels and improving ecological health is still a very controversial topic globally. The new book Prescribed burning in Australasia: The science, practice and politics of burning the bush aims to show “why” and “how” to implement PB to get the best outcome and reduce the risk of disastrous future wildfires. Mana Gharun is one of the authors. (29 May 2020)

 

Another "first" in the Grassland Sciences group: Father and son on the same publication. The long-term low-cost CH₄ sensor paper by Werner and Jon Eugster and colleagues came out this week. In the article, the authors present an empirical function to correct the sensor signal such that it can provide data of research-grade quality. This is an important step forward to establish a procedure to extract the CH₄ signal from the Figaro TGS 2600 sensor also for the low-cost flux chamber that Werner has been building. Read the full article external page here. (27 May 2020)

Congrats, Sergei!! What a great defense!! Well done. It was our first doctoral defense via zoom, a bit unusual. But we even found a solution for the apero afterwards - compliant with BAG rules! (26 May 2020)

After a dry April, the grass finally started to grow in May. Field visits are a much-appreciated activity during Corona times. Here are some impressions from our two grassland stations Früebüel and Chamau, which are part of the projects SUPER-G and IFDewS. (19 May 2020)

We did it!! The ICOS-CH Phase 3 proposal is submitted. 19.5 pages science, with all appendices and quotes some solid 258 pages .... Now the SNF and the reviewers decide!! Let´s cross fingers. (14 May 2020)

We moved our mobile eddy covariance system within the external page NRP73 project InnoFarm again! This week, Markus Staudinger and Regine Maier went to our long-term research site in Oensingen to move our instruments to Aeschi (SO). After an exhausting day in the field, everything is running and for the first time, we will be measuring greenhouse gas fluxes (CO₂, CH₄, N₂O and water vapor) over a maize field. (13 May 2020)

Grasslands also occur in cities: short-cut lawns with little biodiversity. Turning them into near-natural urban meadows could help conserving native biodiversity in cities – but do people accept such wild-looking greenspaces? Find out from a pan-European study (external page Fischer et al.) led by Valentin Klaus and colleagues, now published in Conservation Letters. (13 May 2020)

Stable isotope sampling for FEVER has been kicked off by Ankit Shekhar in Davos. Over the next few months, samples from the soil, tree canopy, and precipitation water will be collected every two weeks to study root water uptake dynamics in response to changes in water availability and climate in subalpine forests. Happy field work season! (12 May 2020)

How does administration, e.g. delivering mail and paying bills, look like during Corona times with home office? Just like this... (5 May 2020)

The conference organizers call it a "grand experiment": Due to the Corona pandemic, external page EGU2020 is taking place as a virtual conference this year. And it works. Mana Gharunand colleagues convened external page their first virtual EGU session today. The session was attended by 105 participants - what a very special experience. The virtual EGU is totally different from the physical EGU but still it was a great opportunity and maybe even easier to interact with the presenters on the chat than in a big seminar room. This year, EGU session material and chats are open to all and do not need registration. (5 May 2020)

Nature-based solutions: it is not a choice between biodiversity vs. climate, but we need both! Read a short external page article signed by many in the field. (4 May 2020)

ETH Zurich has started a serological longitudinal study on the immune response to COVID-19 infections. Also members of our group participate. Safety measures were high, when waiting to have one's blood sample taken. Wearing a mask was highly unusual.... (1 May 2020)

Surprising emails coming in from Wiley: some of our last year's papers are among the top 10% most downloaded papers of external page Restoration Ecology, external page Ecology, external page Journal of Vegetation Science and external page Plant Biology. Congrats to the authors!! (30 April 2020)

The D-USYS Return Plan had been accepted by our Executive Board on Friday, so the preparations for contact tracing had to be implemented: posting maximum room occupancy on our office and lab doors.... (26 April 2020)

We still don't know too much about the mercury (Hg) cycle and human or wildlife exposure to it. Together with colleagues, Werner Eugster and Iris Feigenwinter performed a measurement campaign of Hg fluxes at the external page Swiss FluxNet site Chamau. They found distinct diel cycles that were dominated by soil emissions during the 2018 summer drought. In addition, the team also contributed knowledge to improve eddy covariance flux measurements of Hg. Find out more external page here. (22 April 2020)

Dig out your loggers! This call for contributions was just published in a report in Global Change Biology. Mana Gharun and Nina Buchmann are among the 172 authors who contributed to the report on the establishment of SoilTemp, a geospatial database initiative compiling soil and near‐surface temperature data from all over the world. To date, the database contains time series from more than 7500 temperature sensors from all kinds of biomes from all around the world. More data series will follow and the database will contribute to improving ecological modelling outputs by providing soil microclimate data at higher spatial resolution. (20 April 2020)

About a month has passed since research, teaching, scientific and social interactions - all activities - now go on remotely (if at all), via video conferencing, with even more emails than ever before. We work mainly from home, some group members in the field for maintenance, with an elaborate Field Safety Protocol (even approved by SGU), some checking on instruments in the lab to avoid damage due to not being used. Teaching goes on as well, but it feels weird talking to small black boxes with names or initials on them, but no faces, no immediate feedback. Is it boring, is it understood? We stop talking, ask questions to these black boxes, try to interact. Mostly it works. An evaluation shows, students are fine, the change to remote teaching worked well, but we docents hope to change back soon.

It is a very different way of work at ETH, in the Grassland Sciences group, never experienced before. During the 2018 retreat, we talked about avoiding "survival mode". So, how do we do? Clearly we all "survive", nobody caught the virus, good news. Basic maintenance goes on, so data are flowing in, thus PhD and postdoc projects as well as international collaborations, they are safe. We changed some plans, cancelled intensive field campaigns, but overall, we do just fine. How do we feel? Many of us lack the social interactions in the group, it is different looking in each other's eyes than into a small screen, raising little blue hands or yellow thumb ups. We continue with daily coffee breaks, via zoom, even had an apero (see News below), we keep in contact, but still, it is different. We are looking forward to meet again, in person. (18 April 2020)

"The arboreal equivalent of a heart attack", this is how the external page ‘ōhi‘a death is described. The ‘Ōhi‘a lehua trees (external page Metrosideros polymorpha) are endemic to Hawai‘i and constitute large forests. An invasive fungus enters the trees through wounds and cloaks the xylem, the tree dies in days to weeks. Ryan Perroy has adapted our external page Flying Tree Top Sampler and uses it to cut branches at the top canopy and to spray some pruning sealant on the open wound. Further analyses follow. (15 April 2020)

No April Fools' Joke: 729 authors! All contributed with plant trait data to the new open-access paper by external page Kattge et al. in Global Change Biology. Have a look! (1 April 2020)

Carbon–nitrogen interactions in European forests and semi-natural vegetation, this is the title of two publications which were published in Biogeosciences. external page Part 1 deals with Fluxes and budgets of carbon, nitrogen and greenhouse gases from ecosystem monitoring and modelling, external page Part 2 deals with Untangling climatic, edaphic, management and nitrogen deposition effects on carbon sequestration potentials. Chris Flechard, the first author undertook a huge effort to compile lots of data for sites which were part of earlier EU projects. Some might remember: CarboEurope, NitroEurope... many years ago. The Lägeren site is one of the sites, Werner Eugster and Nina Buchmann contributed. But great results, worth to be read! And open access, too !! (26 March 2020)

Emergency mode now also for research: D-USYS shuts down its research efforts safely, including our group's activities. Special permits grant the possibility to continue minimal maintenance, e.g. for our sites of the Swiss FluxNet and IFDewS. All other activities are either shut down or carried out from home, as good as possible since also schools are closed... (23 March 2020)

ETH Zurich shuts down classroom teaching due to the Corona virus, switches to remote teaching for most of its courses. Also our courses will be taught now via zoom, a software which most of us did not know a week ago.... Let's see how it works out. (16 March 2020)

Sergei´s study raised attention with the stakeholders and was mentioned in the Bauernzeitung: external page Studie: Biodiversität lohnt sich finanziell auf intensiven Flächen. We fully agree! (8 March 2020)

The current issue of the magazine WALD und HOLZ (Forest and Wood) features an article explaining research done in external page TreeNet. Werner Eugster is one of the authors of the article that illustrates how the point dendrometer measurements performed in TreeNet help «feel the pulse of trees». (5 March 2020)

Digging for earthworms next to ETH main building: Last Monday, the LERNfeld introductory course for young scientists took place. It included a hands-on part outside of the HG. Master students and PhD students of Biology, Agricultural Sciences, Geography and Environmental Sciences got prepared for their coaching role before they carry out inquiry based learning activities with school classes on farms. The LERNfeld project is a science and education program for primary and secondary schools. It provides students and their teachers as well as early-career scientists and farmers a unique experience to cooperate in out-of-the-classroom research experiments and discussions. (2 March 2020)

This year's Grassland winter event took us to Fideris - Heuberge. Together with our colleagues from the Computational Ecosystem Science group we enjoyed a day of sledging. While snow conditions remained uncertain until shortly before our event, Thursday turned out to be a perfect day for sledging. The weather was diverse, from sunny conditions in the morning to a snow storm in the afternoon, and calm conditions again in the evening. Everybody was very motivated and still had energy for a snowball fight at the end of the day. (27 February 2020)

Valentin Klaus was elected treasurer of the Association of Academic Staff of the Department of Environmental Systems Science, VMUSYS, back in November 2019. The work for this task is starting now and Valentin is getting used to his new responsibility for the finances of VMUSYS. Congratulations and good luck, Valentin. (20 February 2020)

Werner Eugster is currently visiting his project partners Prof. Surender Singh and Prof. Raj Singh in India. While being there, Werner was invited to a meeting by the Vice-Chancellor of the external page Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar. Together with Surender, Raj and the PhD student Navreet Bassi, Werner met the Vice-Chancellor for an inspiring discussion. (19 February 2020)

Also external page ProClim reported about it (in German only). (27 February 2020)

Sergei Schaub’s most recent article in Nature Communications was covered by the Swiss farmer’s newspaper external page Schweizer Bauer. This underlines the practical relevance of our research. (7 February 2020)

Increasing revenues by increasing the number of species? In their article published in Nature Communications today, Sergei Schaub and his co-authors show that biodiversity can indeed be a economically relevant. Find out more in the external page original article or in today's ETH News. (7 February 2020)

In our Specialized Lab Module together with the Crop Science group, Agricultural Sciences students were able to try out and learn methods to quantify climatic, biogeochemical and ecophysiological variables. Students learned how to measure plant ecophysiological responses to climate variables, starch, leaf chlorophyll content or leaf water potential. Thanks to Mana Gharun, Eduardo Pérez and external page Marco Lehmann for offering the students this hands-on experience. (31 January - 7 February 2020)

In today´s lab meeting, we could prove: Davos is indeed labelled, the wooden ICOS RI certificate is here! (5 February 2020)

The Executive Board invited to a Town Hall meeting to inform about the plans for this year and to introduce the status of the rETHink initiative. Nina Buchmann is the operational co-lead of workingstream 2 (WS 2) on professorships. At the Town Hall meeting, Nina presented the plans for WS 2 that involve defining what a professorship at ETH means and what values and guidelines should apply. The participatory process is just starting. Watch the video of the entire event or have a look at the presentation (German only). (4 February 2020)

Our Annual Academic Achievements report 2019 has been submitted. Here some interesting numbers:

• 626 students taught in 2019,
• 580 grades given in 2019,
• 12 active PhD students (by the end of the year),
• 1 co-supervised PhD student finished in 2019,
• and a large number of publications….. 49 !!! Out of the 39 journal articles, 11 are open access, thus 28%.

Thanks a lot: great team, great fun, great success. (31 January 2020)

A warm welcome to external page Prof. Dave Wiliams who will spend his sabbatical with us until end of June. We wish you a great time! (29 January 2020)

Outreach to society on a topic many are interested in: Do we eat sustainably, today and tomorrow? Nina Buchmann gave a talk at the external page Rotary Club Zürcher Weinland. (16 January 2020)

Limited evidence for spatial resource partitioning across temperate grassland biodiversity experiments, so the title of a new paper by Barry et al. published open access in external page Ecology, with contributions of Nina Buchmann and Steffi von Felten, a former doctoral student. (15 January 2020)

Using multiple model to evaluate nitrous oxide emissions from an intensively managed grassland, namely Chamau, is the topic of external page Fuchs et al., published in JGR in January. (15 January 2020)

In a new blog post on the external page Agrarpolitik Blog, Sergei Schaub and his co-authors explain the added economic value of diversity in intensive grassland. The blog post is linked to external page Sergei's recent paper in Ecological Economics. Read the blog external page here (in German only). (15 January 2020)

At this time of year, fog occurs in large parts of Switzerland. Not the conditions many people would wish for. But what was fog again? An article on Watson discusses exactly this question and looks at options to get rid of the fog. Werner Eugster calculated the hypothetical energy needed to evaporate fog droplets. Find out how surprisingly small this energy demand is and why it remains hypothetical external page here. (14 January 2020)

A new publication from the DiversGrass project looks at the question “What is the effect of droughts on feed prices?” To answer this question, Sergei Schaub and Robert Finger used an empirical example from Germany and the results were just published in Environmental Research Letters. Find the article external page here. (8 January 2020)

The Grassland Sciences group wishes you a happy and healthy 2020! We look forward to a new year full of exciting research, stimulating teaching, and enriching outreach experiences. (1 January 2020)