COST Action E38: Woody Root Dynamics

Founded in 1971, COST is an intergovernmental framework for European Co-operation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research, allowing the co-ordination of nationally funded research on a European level. COST Actions cover basic and pre-competitive research as well as activities of public utility.

The COST Action E38 was part of the COST Domain on Forests and Forestry Products. The aim of the Action E38 was to enhance the knowledge base and improve methodology of measuring root processes in relation to environmental change.

Within this topic, we focused on partitioning of soil CO₂-efflux into root-rhizosphere and heterotrophic respiration, and quantifying their contribution to total ecosystem C-efflux. With respect to environmental change, our aim was to determine major environmental and biological drivers for root-rhizosphere respiration. To tackle these objectives we worked with different techniques ranging from flux measurements, to below and above ground biomass determinations and isotope analyses.

The fieldwork was carried out in a mixed forest in the footprint area of a climate and flux tower at the CarboEuropeIP research site Lägeren in Switzerland.

Publications

Ruehr NK, Buchmann N (2010) Soil respiration fluxes in a temperate mixed forest: seasonality and temperature sensitivities differ among microbial and root-rhizosphere respiration. Tree Physiology 30: 165-176

Ruehr NK, Knohl A, Buchmann N (2009) Environmental variables controlling soil respiration on diurnal, seasonal and annual time-scales in a mixed mountain forest in Switzerland. Biogeochemistry doi: external page 10.1007/s10533-009-9383-z

Ruehr NK, Offerman CA, Gessler A, Winkler BJ, Ferrio JP, Buchmann N, Barnard RL (2009) Drought effects on allocation of recent carbon: From beech leaves to soil respiration. New Phytologist 184: 950-961