2023
December
As in every year - and already awaited - the brass band came by the LFW and played Christmas carols. Thanks so much! We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2024.
Sometimes, scientific facts get mixed up, are used out of context, or are simply misrepresented. In these cases, it is important that scientists help to correct those statements. Nina Buchmann recently helped to set estimates on CO2 and oxygen uptake of beech tress right. Together with colleagues, she came up with a model calculation showing that a single beech tree on average takes up 1100 g of CO2 and produces 800 g of O2 at the most. Read the full article on external page Faktencheck (in German). (14 December 2023)
After being announced as the award winner earlier this autumn, Lorenz Allemann was now presented the SFIAR award for his Master's thesis in the external page award ceremony in Zollikofen. At the event, Lorenz presented his award winning Master's project, participated in a panel, and - of course - received the award certificate. Find out more about the event in the USYS News. Congratulations, Lorenz! (12 December 2023)
The holiday season is approaching which means that it was time for the traditional Grassland Xmas party again. As it was St Nicholas, festivities were launched with Grittibänz in the morning coffee break. Thereafter, preparations for the crêpe party potluck in the evening commenced. Nice smells started to spread in the building, and the Lichthof turned into a nicely decorated dinner space. The Grassies gathered to celebrate the successful year with their families, former group members, and collaborators. A very rich buffet invited guests to taste home made foods from around the world, the younger party guests turned out to be very skilled crêpe makers, the Grassland Orchestraw entertained the group with two pieces, a music quiz triggered a lot of guesswork (while some people just knew the songs) - and everybody enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere and good company. A big THANK YOU to the organizing team Kukkis, Lorenz, and Philip! (6 December 2023)
November
external page Research.com has just released the 2023 edition of their annual ranking of top scientists in the world. After ranking fifth last year, external page Nina Buchmann is listed 7th best female scientist and 4th in the field of Ecology and Evolution in Switzerland. (30 November 2023)
Several Grassies participated in the external page 21st Swiss Geoscience Meeting in Mendrisio. Luana Krebs gave a talk about long-term CO2 exchange in Davos, and Liliana Scapucci presented a poster about combined drought-heatwave impact in the Lägeren forest, both part of the COCO project. Kukka-Maaria Kohonen presented a poster about CO2 fluxes and winter snowpack in the Alp Weissenstein grassland, Sophie Emberger presented an UrbaNature poster about her Master’s project on carbon and water fluxes in urban green areas, and Xin Zou presented a poster on soil moisture dynamics and infiltration patterns in tropical rainforests. It was a wonderful opportunity to share our interesting results, discuss scientific findings with old and new colleagues, and also enjoy the sunny weather of Ticino. (17-18 November 2023)
No, we are not making it a habit, but we just had another lab meeting with prosecco. After celebrating a twenty year anniversary two weeks ago, we congratulated Sabina Keller to 25 years at ETH Zurich. Sabina started working at ETH as a student helper during her studies of Biology. After her diploma, she stayed on to do a doctorate that was co-supervised by Prof. Josef Nösberger. Sabina finished her thesis when the Grassland Sciences group had just started and some time later, she came back as Nina Buchmann's research analyst for the external page WBGU. Sabina has since taken on several tasks in our group, but her main focus is now on data management and data archiving, and on outreach. Thanks for all your work in the group, Sabina, and congratulations to a quarter century at ETH! (16 November 2023)
In the meantime, it has become a tradition that the Grassland Sciences group hosts a group of kids for external page Zukunftstag ("future day"). Also this year, Sabina Keller organized a full-day program and together with Annika Ackermann, Philip Meier, Anna K. Gilgen, Thomas Baur, and Roland Werner welcomed nine kids in our labs and workshop. The kids extracted leaf pigments and essential oils, studied stomata under the microscope, and built their own soil moisture sensor in the workshop. As always, self-made ice cream closed the eventful day. (9 November 2023)
Grassland researchers and stakeholders exchanged during the workshop "More than cheese: Multifunctional grasslands for ecosystem services", which was embedded in the Food Day @ETH organized by the World Food System Center. Valentin Klaus, Franziska Richter, Iris Feigenwinter and colleagues presented latest results from the ServiceGrass and SUPER-G projects, and participated in lively group discussions. A mission for increasing grassland multifunctionality! (2 November 2023)
Prosecco in the lab meeting? Only for exceptional reasons, of course. Twenty years at ETH Zurich certainly qualify as such an exceptional reason. Roland A. Werner is celebrating his 20 years anniversary at ETH Zurich. For this occasion, we made an exception and had a glass of prosecco in our lab meeting. Roland was the fifth group member to start in 2003. He has since taken care of the IsoLab that is one of the important pillars of our research. More than fourty internal and external doctoral students have relied on measurements by the IsoLab, numerous articles have been published, and the IsoLab has also performed measurements for many external partners and projects. Thank you, Roland, and congratulations to your ETH anniversary! (1 November 2023)
October
The Grassland Sciences group participated in this year's Klimarunde. Nina Buchmann and her colleague Robert Finger from the Agricultural Economics and Policy group presented a poster in the table talk session. The Download poster (PDF, 8.5 MB) was entitled "Landwirtschaft und Klimawandel: Optionen für Vermeidung und Anpassung?" and dealt with the dichotomy of agriculture causing climate change and being affected by it at the same time. (31 October 2023)
Making our own fondue from scratch. This was the catchy line that Philip Meier used to advertise the Grassland autumn event. And it caught attention, indeed. Many group members joined the event on the terrace, where a tent allowed a cosy atmosphere despite the rain (good field work equipment pays off). We grated the cheese for three different fondue mixtures and tasted them right away. Some Grassies enjoyed their first fondue ever but even the very experienced fondue eaters got to try something new. Thanks for the perfect organization, Philip! (26 October 2023)
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Looking up last instructions. -
Preparations in full swing. -
Ready to go - it just needs to melt. -
Tasting our own fondue.
Congratulations to Franzi Richter for her successful doctoral defense! Four years of ServiceGrass and a wealth of ecosystem services wrapped up in a twenty-minutes-presentation and one hour of tough questions - well done, Franzi! (25 October 2023)
The InsuranceGrass doctoral students from ETH Zurich, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) met for a two-day meeting in Frankfurt. They provided updates on each other’s work packages and exchanged their findings and challenges. In in-depth topic discussions, the doctoral students examined the current models they are using, discussed the use of open-access databases, and brainstormed constructive solutions. An afternoon visit to a community-supported agriculture farm near the city also helped get further insights. Thanks everyone for the input and looking forward to the next meeting! (12/13 October 2023)
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Lots of discussions -
Visit to CSA farm -
The four InsuranceGrass doctoral students
Congratulations to Dr. Ankit Shekhar! Ankit has submitted the deposit copies of his doctoral thesis and now officially holds the doctoral title. After his doctoral thesis in the FEVER project, Ankit will continue working in our group as a postdoc in the EcoDrive project. Thanks for staying with us, Ankit! (5 October 2023)
The Rector's Impulse Fund supports innovative projects that improve teaching. Last year, the Grassland Sciences group got funding for a project to foster computational competencies in Agricultural Sciences. Regine Maier, Nina Buchmann, and Iris Feigenwinter developed a task library using JupyterNotebooks and R to support the Agricultural Sciences Bachelor's students in working with research data. Check out the short project description on the Rector's Impulse Fund page.
The Grassland group warmly welcomes Sophie Emberger who starts her doctorate in the UrbaNature project, after completing her Master's thesis on a related topic. Welcome to the group, Sophie! (3 October 2023)
September
First day of fieldwork as a Grassie for Sambit Shome. Together with Fabio Turco and student helper Nora, Sambit conducted an intense biomass sampling of sugar beet plants in Tänikon. Lots of work but also a nice day to be outside in the field! Tänikon is the next study site within the DONA project, where Sambit will measure N2O fluxes using semi-automated chambers while Fabio will be using eddy covariance. The instrumentation will be installed beginning of November. (28 September 2023)
Congratulations to Emily Oliveira who defended her doctoral thesis on "Effects of drought and soil structure on soil microbiome, fauna, and plant productivity in different cropping systems" today. (26 September 2023)
Lorenz Allemann wins the 2023 Master's Thesis Award of the Swiss Forum for International Agricultural Research (external page SFIAR) for his Master's thesis entitled "Nitrogen sources of Brachiaria spp. in tropical pastures". In his thesis conducted in Colombia, Lorenz looked at options to reduce nitrogen loss from tropical pastures. Learn more in the external page official SFIAR announcement. Congratulations, Lorenz! (20 September 2023)
The fall semester 2023 started, with a brand new online, directed reading course on "Introduction to Crop and Forage Production". It is offered to Master´s students in Agricultural Sciences who did not join the Bachelor of Agricultural Sciences. (19 September 2023)
Happy anniversary, FluxCoffee! We are celebrating the one-year anniversary of the FluxCoffee, a regular meeting under the lead of Lukas Hörtnagl during which the group's doctoral students and postdocs come together to share their knowledge and expertise. To celebrate the occasion, the participants prepared a special meeting snack for Lukas and surprised him with an Extrawurstsemmel, a personalized label on his favorite drink, and some Austrian sweets.
Over the course of 30 meetings (so far), a wide range of topics - including questions about flux processing and post-processing, quality control, and data sharing - were discussed and investigated. Sometimes the FluxCoffee group watches a (scientific) movie, for example about turbulence. Other times they just drink a coffee. Insights, tutorials, and recommendations are collected in the continuously-updated FluxCoffee Notes that have already grown to more than 200 pages. Since there is still a lot to learn, the FluxCoffee will continue. (14 September 2023)
Evidence-based policy: This means science needs to inform policy-makers about the latest results. So we did: an invitation to Bern to the Bundeshaus, informing parliamentarians of the Green Party about insights gained in the external page National Research Program 73 on "Sustainable Economy", in particular about the InnoFarm project. Good questions, active discussion. To be repeated! (13 September 2023)
This year's ICOS-CH Annual Meeting took place at external page Empa Dübendorf. The program included updates from ICOS RI, external page ICOS Switzerland and from the two ICOS Class 1 stations Jungfraujoch and Davos as well as scientific talks both from the Atmosphere and Ecosystem domain. During lunch break, the Swiss ICOS community visited the Dübendorf-Empa station of the National Air Pollution Monitoring Network (external page NABEL), which is one out of 16 stations distributed throughout the country. Great to see what and how other networks are measuring! A big thank you to Martin Steinbacher (ICOS researcher at Empa) for the local organization of the successful meeting. We are already looking forward to the next ICOS-CH Annual Meeting in Bern. (12 September 2023)
We are always interested to see what our colleagues are doing. Therefore, we organized a visit to the external page Swiss Canopy Crane II site in Hölstein that is run by our former group member external page Ansgar Kahmen. Ansgar gave a tour around his impressive site at around 540 m above sea level in the Jura Baselland to group of 11 Grassies. We learned about the challenges of setting up the crane and the site that have both attracted a lot of researchers since the setup in 2018. We also got a summary of the first exciting results from the site. At the end of the tour, we all got the chance to enjoy the fantastic view from the crane from where we got a top view of the drought experiment and a glimpse of how some of the tree species are suffering from natural drought. Thanks a lot for the interesting and fun morning, Ansgar! (11 September 2023)
Over the past 20 years, a lot of photos from our work have accumulated. Just recently, Sabina Keller finished a big effort to transfer them all to our GL Gallery on the ETH Gallery server. In this process, more than 4700 images were transferred, categorized and tagged. The images can now be search, viewed, and downloaded by all members of the group. (12 September 2023)
The external page Open Your Eyes photo festival offers a big stage for the 17 SDGs and the Agenda 2030. Until mid-October, each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals has a dedicated "island" across the city of Zurich with photos, explanations, and also information about ETH projects related to the respective SDG. Our group has contributed to the exhibit on SDG 15 "Life on Land" where our research greenhouse gas fluxes is highlighted under the title "Making the most of healthy grasslands". Find out more about all ETH contributions to the festival, the additional ETH events putting the SDGs in the spotlight, check out the festival catalogue or go for a external page stroll in the city to explore the fascinating outdoor exhibition. (8 September 2023)
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Exhibit at Bürkliplatz -
Exhibit at Hafen Enge -
Contribution of our group
The Grassland group warmly welcomes Sambit Shome who takes up his doctorate in the EYE-CLIMA project today. Welcome to the group, Sambit! (5 September 2023)
Where do urban trees take up their water? An easy question, but no good answer yet. Within a Master's project, we will study different tree species across the urban heat island in Zurich. Thus, the first decision, which trees to be studied where and when? Here some tree individual which come into consideration. (1 September 2023)
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Urban tree, already equipped for sap flux measurements -
Old plane trees -
Trees across a city park
August
This year's group retreat was another anniversary for the Grassland Sciences group - the 20th retreat! This time, the group stayed in Oberägeri for two days. As always, the program covered some traditional topics, e.g., looking back at the past year or coming up with new research ideas, as well as sessions on topics of current interest like a session on metadata or fieldwork safety. In the late afternoon and evening, there was also time for social activities. Despite the very rainy weather (we probably caught the two wettest days of the month), more than half of the group enjoyed a swim in Lake Aegeri. The others relaxed in the indoor swimming pool and spa area. And of course, there were table tennis, card games, and animated conversations. (28/29 August 2023)
The new, updated edition of our Davos excursion guide is published! The excursion guide has been used on a regular basis since it was first published in 2019.The booklet containing a wealth of information is very helpful for excursions to the ICOS Class 1 Ecosystem station Davos, but also for other outreach purposes or just as a nice overview of the station and its surroundings. For the new edition, almost all figures and some of the text have been updated based on our long-term measurements and new scientific findings. The excursion guide is a co-production of Susanne Burri (ICOS-CH coordinator), Werner Eugster, Iris Feigenwinter (Davos ICOS Station PI), external page Mana Gharun (former Davos ICOS Station PI), and Nina Buchmann (ICOS-CH Focal Point). (9 August 2023)
Summer is excursion time! external page Mana Gharun, former Grassland group member and now professor in Münster, was visiting from Germany with a group of students. We showed them around at our two Swiss FluxNet sites Davos and Alp Weissenstein. At the external page ICOS site Davos, the students got to know the measurements we conduct at the tower and the forest floor. Philip Meier explained the instruments and electronics located in the hut. Together with Mana, Iris Feigenwinter and Luana Krebs introduced the students to measurement devices for environmental variables and plant physiology, and Luana showed them how to perform chamber measurements for soil respiration. The next day at Alp Weissenstein, the students visited the eddy covariance station and Franziska Richter introduced them to the local alpine vegetation and alpine grassland management. This was also a great opportunity for many members of the Grassland group to join and see the station at Alp Weissenstein for the first time, and to enjoy the amazing train ride to Preda! (25-26 July 2023)
The last doctoral defense before the summer break: Philipp Schuler successfully defended his thesis on "Nature´s hidden code: Unravelling hydrogen isotope fractionation in plant carbohydrates". (13 July 2023)
The Grassies bike team (Franzi Richter, Ankit Shekhar, Roland Werner and Sabina Keller) took part in this year's external page Bike to Work Challenge and rode almost 1000 km by bike in 109 days. According to the organizers, the team's contribution saved 143 kg of CO2. Bike to work is a campaign to promote health in companies. Every year in May and June over 80'000 commuters ride to work by bike on as many work days as possible. (11 June 2023)
external page ICOS has just released the second volume of FLUXES – The European Greenhouse Gas Bulletin entitled "Nature-based solutions for net zero". Nina Buchmann served in its scientific steering committee. The bulletin summarizes findings based on the observational data produced by ICOS and shows the potential of different ecosystems to act as carbon sinks. In particular, FLUXES points out what the limitations of nature-based solutions are and that we should not solely rely on them to address the climate change challenge. FLUXES aims at highlighting climate issues to an audience of policymakers, policy advisors, and climate journalists. Have a look at the external page compilation online. (6 July 2023)
As every year, the excursion to Alp Weissenstein concluded the excursions season in the spring semester. This year, the excursion was offered as a two-day program again. The students arrived in Preda on Thursday evening to be ready for the excursion early the next morning. Due to bad weather on Friday, Franzi Richter and Anna K. Gilgen had to prepare differently than usual. Instead of a hike along the different grassland types in the area of the alp, they collected a selection of species from each grassland. This way, the students were able to have a look at the most important species despite the bad weather and the change to a (mostly) indoor program. (29-30 June 2023)
We are very excited that Switzerland has become a member of external page ICOS. Since the very beginning of ICOS, Switzerland was an observer - after ten years, the Swiss parliament has now taken a decision that allows Switzerland to become a full member. We are very happy about this big step and look forward to our continued collaboration within this big European reserach infrastructure. For more info, see the external page official announcement by ICOS. (29 June 2023)
Congratulations to Yunke Peng for his successful defense of his doctoral thesis. Yunke has been hosted in the Grassland group since external page Prof. Beni Stocker left for university of Bern. Now, Yunke's project has come to an end. Well done, Yunke! (23 June 2023)
Ankit Shekhar successfully defended his doctoral thesis "Forest vulnerability to extreme dryness stress". Ankit showed all the work he has done within the FEVER project in the past three and a half years. Congratulations, Ankit! (16 June 2023)
The group is welcomes Alena Pavlačková who is joining our group for her external page IAESTE internship for the next three and a half months. (15 June 2023)
Colleagues from the AECP group had a short trip to our grassland site Chamau as part of their visit to external page LBBZ Schluechthof. Yi Wang introduced our eddy covariance measurements and showed some recent data from the station. The group also got some hands-on experience with soil temperature and leaf area index measurements. Thanks for visiting us! (8 June 2023)
Our outreach specialist Sabina Keller produced a short video for the Kangaroo goes Science event 2023. At this event, the top hundred seventh-grade girls who took part in the mathematics kangaroo competition in March are invited to ETH Zurich. The girls get to know female students from ETH Zurich. In addition, workshops and laboratory visits give them an insight into the various aspects of natural and engineering sciences. In the frame of the "Women in STEM Videos", our former postdoc, now professor in Münster (Germany), external page Mana Gharun climbs the Davos tower and explains how a forests can help reduce climate change. Check out the external page video. (8 June 2023)
A delegation of external page FAO and the external page FOAG visited the WFSC today. Different projects and initiatives were presented, a lively discussion followed on potential collaborations in the future. DONA and InsuranceGrass were presented from our group. (2 June 2023)
We warmly welcome Lorenz Allemann and Regine Maier in the group. Lorenz joins our group for his doctoral thesis within the DONA project. Regine is back in the group in a new function. She is now taking over the preparation of the SISAL project, in particular of WP1. Discussions of the future governance of SISAL and the coordination of a concept paper for the IAS complement her duties. (1 June 2023)
About a year ago, Werner Eugster had died. We still miss him and talk about him regularly. Now, we visited "his" oak which was planted after the funeral service last year. It has survived the heatwave and drought last year rather well. (1 June 2023)
SISAL is not funded yet, but the preparation for this National Swiss Research Infrastructure is already on-going. Today we met at Eschikon which will most likely become the first new instrumented watershed within SISAL. Colleagues from ETH Zurich, Eawag, WSL and Empa joined us, checking out the Research Station for Plant Sciences, the new 5 ha agricultural land bought by ETH Zurich last year, and the landscape around Eschikon. We even found some flowing water, despite the recently high temperatures. (30 May 2023)
Quantifying the effect of urban vegetation on CO2 and H2O vapor fluxes is one of the goals of UrbaNature. Now we had the kick-off with all project members, only two doctoral students are still missing. Lots of questions and interesting science are lying ahead of us. (25 May 2023)
Our subcanopy station in Davos is now measuring CH4 eddy covariance fluxes - in addition to the continuous CO2 and H2O vapor fluxes. To our knowledge, these measurements are the first subcanopy CH4 flux measurements globally. We are curious to see the first results. (2 May 2023)
In response to the communication around a study on career ambitions of young women in academia conducted by the University of Zurich, the external page ETH Women Professors Forum (WPF), among them Nina Buchmann, sent an open letter to the chief editors of leading Swiss media. In this letter, the WPF strongly disagrees with how the study results were represented in the media and calls for a more critical and open discussion of the results. Find out more about the perspective of female ETH professors in the Download letter (PDF, 151 KB) or in an interview with Vice President Julia Dannath. (15 May 2023)
According to a newly published ranking on external page research.com, Nina Buchmann is the best female scientist in Switzerland in the field of Ecology and Evolution (and number four in this field in Switzerland overall). Check out external page Nina's profile. (4 May 2023)
Luana Krebs, Iris Feigenwinter and Liliana Scapucci participated in the European Geoscience Union General Assembly external page EGU23 this year. This was a good occasion to share some interesting scientific results, but also to meet old and new friends while enjoying the beautiful city of Vienna. Luana presented a poster on forest floor greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes in Davos, and Liliana gave a talk about soil respiration responses to soil temperature in the Lägeren forest, both part of the COCO project. Iris presented results from her doctoral thesis (SUPER-G project) on greenhouse gas fluxes from the Chamau grassland in a talk. Find a list with other contributions of external page ICOS-CH members on the external page ICOS-CH page. (23-28 April)
As every year, everyone from ETH Zurich, WSL and Empa working for external page ICOS at the Davos station met for the ICOS Davos spring meeting. This year, the meeting took place at WSL in Birmensdorf, a bit off the path but always worth it! The ICOS-CH crowd enjoyed discussing and talking informally and were happy to find common solutions for the site and for the project. Increasingly more external research projects are coming to our Ecosystem Class 1 Station which brings both, more organizational challenges and more exciting research. Thanks to the ICOS Davos WSL crew for hosting this year's meeting! (18 April 2023)
Scientific findings can be very relevant for society. Nevertheless, they are often insufficiently known outside academia - among other things because they are not disseminated through the right channels. To increase visibility of scientific results and facilitate translation, results from the InnoFarm project have now been published in a policy brief on the external page NRP 73 webpage. Find out more in the external page policy brief or in a external page blog post (in German) on the Agrarpolitik-Blog. (14 April 2023)
It's getting real: Our two new isotope ratio mass spectrometers and peripheries are being installed at the moment. The service technicians opened the first box this week and started unpacking and installing. A day later, the mass spectrometers were running already. Now, we have to be patient until all the peripheries are connected and fine-tuned. (17 April 2023)
"As a professor, your work is never done", is the title of an interview with Nina Buchmann, published in the latest issue of Download Life (PDF, 1.8 MB). Nina was asked about her experiences with rETHink, she co-lead Working Stream 2.
Twenty years ago, on 1 April 2003, Nina Buchmann started the Grassland Sciences group at ETH Zurich. A lot has happened since. We took this as an opportunity to organize an anniversary symposium to look back at what we have done and what we achieved. Current and former group members talked about greenhouse gases, ecophysiology, biodiversity, modeling, technical developments, and alternative career paths. But of course, there was also a lot of time to exchange memories, update each other on what has happened since we last met, and to create new memories. A big thank you to the many Grassland alumni and colleagues who came to ETH to celebrate with us! (31 March 2023)
A new EU project started, external page EYE-CLIMA, with Swiss contributions. Our group contributes to WP2 which addresses greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, in particular N2O emissions. The two-day kick-off took place in Oslo, with lively discussions and many challenging plans. (12 and 21 March 2023)
They arrived! After a long journey from preparing a proposal for funding to preparing the tender documents and evaluating the offers, we received our two new IRMS and almost all the peripheries and supplies as scheduled today. For now, the instruments remain safely packed in the big boxes in our newly renovated lab. We are looking forward to the installation and the start of a new era for the IsoLab. (17 March 2023)
Finally: Although InsuranceGrass already runs since last year, the project members met for the first time in person during a two day workshop/retreat in Zurich. Interesting plans, ambitious goals, challenging questions to be answered were exchanged. Two inputs of colleagues and two insights into Community-Supported Agriculture initiatives helped to get further ideas and insights. (16/17 March 2023)
Philip Meier and Iris Feigenwinter visited the Davos station, which is part of external page ICOS, external page ICOS Switzerland and Swiss FluxNet. The greenhouse gas exchange of the spruce forest is continuously measured with eddy covariance using an infrared gas analyzer (IRGA) and an ultrasonic anemometer. In her new function as ICOS station PI, Iris got to know the station from the top of the measurement tower. While up there, Philip and Iris performed some basic maintenance as cleaning the IRGA, and also enjoyed the scenic view on that sunny day! (7 March 2023)
We cordially welcome Kukka-Maaria Kohonen to our group. She starts her postdoc with us, after doing her PhD in Helsinki. We look forward to working together in many exciting new projects in the coming years. (1 March 2023)
With the spring semester, our lecture on Agroecology is back, offered together with the WFSC. This also includes five public lectures. Find more info on these lectures here. (16 February 2023)
Our Annual Academic Achievements report 2022 has been submitted. Here some impressive numbers:
- 388 students taught in 2022,
- 555 grades given in 2022,
- 2 Bachelor's and Master's students finished in 2022,
- 11 active doctoral students (by the end of the year),
- 5 doctoral students finished in 2022,
- a large number of publications ... 54. Out of the 42 journal articles, many have been written with very large consortia.
- 75% of these papers have been published in open access journals (Gold OA) or are open access (Hybrid OA). To increase the open access, we also uploaded postprints to the ETH Research Collection (Green OA). The result: 78% of our publications from 2022 are openly available to everybody!
Thanks to a great team!!
(31 January 2023)
This year´s external page 10th Sustainability Conference of Agroscope took place in Reckenholz. The topic was "Gesunde und nachhaltige Ernährung: Wir stimmen 3x täglich ab". Nina Buchmann was invited to introduce the topic “Sustainable agriculture in the context of food security, climate change and biodiversity loss” in 15 minutes, including discussion..... a bit of a rush. (26 January 2023)
A blog post by Valentin Klaus was published in the "Agrarpolitik Blog" of the Agricultural Economics and Policy group. In his post, Valentin reports on the finding of a study from the external page Biodiversity Exploratories that looked at the importance of species diversity for ecosystem services of permanent grassland in Europe. The external page study by Le Provost and co-authors published in Nature Ecology and Evolution showed that not only plant diversity at the local scale but also in the wider surroundings positively influence multiple ecosystem services provided by the grasslands. Read the external page full blog (in German). (25 January 2023)
"Greenhouse gas exchange of forests and agroecosystems: fluxes, budgets and surprises" was the title of a talk given by Nina Buchmann within the colloquium of the Institute for Landscape Ecology at the University of Münster. Despite the late start at 6:15 pm, a lively discussion developed, followed by an apero. (24 January 2023)
In the morning, Nina Buchmann visited the new Amtsvenn eddy covariance site of external page Mana Gharun! A great peatland site, the first tower site of Mana. Well done!! (24 January 2023)
This year´s presentations of talks started online. Nina Buchmann was invited to give a talk in the external page Seminar Series of the Cluster of Excellence “PhenoRob – Robotics and Phenotyping for Sustainable Crop Production”. She presented insights from various projects on “From high time resolution measurements of greenhouse gas fluxes to climate-smart management of agroecosystems”. (13 January 2023)
Happy New Year! The Grassland Sciences group wishes you the very best for 2023! This year, we are celebrating the 20 years anniversary of our group. We will be continuing fascinating research in our current and new projects together with old and new group members and our collaborators. We are looking forward to many exciting encounters with students, colleagues, and the public. Find out what we did last year in our News Archive. (1 January 2023)