2015                        

Two talks were given by GL members at the external page2015 AGU Fall Meeting in San Franciscocall_made.

(1) B23H-03:  “Contributions of Understory and Overstory to Ecosystem CO₂ Fluxes in a Temperate Mixed Forest in Switzerland” by Eugenie Paul-Limoges, Sebastian Wolf, Lukas Hörtnagl, Werner Eugster, Nina Buchmann;

(2) B32A-01: “Subcanopy Flux Measurements in Forest Ecosystems” by Sebastian Wolf, Eugenie Paul-Limoges, Dennis Baldocchi.

In addition a talk by Zscheischler J. et al. with contributions from Sebastian Wolf on "B31E-03: “Short-Term Weather Variability is an Important Control of Interannual Variability in Carbon and Water Fluxes in Temperate Forests” was given. The Biogeosciences sessions “Biosphere-Atmosphere Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems” was for the fifth year convened by Sebastian Wolf with Ankur Desai and Paul Stoy as co-conveners.

New paper by Zhou et al. with contributions from Petra D'Odorico on external page"Global parameterization and validation of a two-leaf light use efficiency model for predicting gross primary production across FLUXNET sites"call_made is now available in Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences.

The importance of ICOSSwitzerland and the establishment of external pageICOS ERICcall_made were also highlighted by the external pageHigh Altitude Research Stations Jungfraujoch & Gornergratcall_made as well as in an article by Prof. Markus Leuenberger from the external pageUniversity of Berncall_made, focussing on the aims of ICOS (in German). 

Between 25-27th November the external pageICOS ETCcall_made invited all external pageICOS Station PIs to Todi Italycall_made. During the workshop the currently existing ecosystem network with its associated observation sites was discussed. Lukas Hörtnagl and Lutz Merbold represented external pageICOS Switzerlandcall_made as site delegates for the Davos Seehornwald.

At the Nationaler Zukunftstag on 12 Nov. 2015, four children visited our lab and gained a diverse insight into different aspects of work done within the Grassland Sciences group – be it with tropical trees, respiring tabacco roots, the sensitivity of sensors, milling and weighing, feeding the mass spec, extracting leaf chlorophyll, speed freezing a plant, etc. It was fun!

Three presentations were given by GL members during the external page13th Swiss Geoscience Meetingcall_made (20/21 November) in Basel.

(1) D’Odorico P. and Buchmann N.: "Land Surface Phenology – A good surrogate for photosynthesis seasonality?";

(2) Hörtnagl L. et al.: "Management influence on GHG fluxes over Central European grasslands";

(3) Merbold L. et al.: "No memory effects of restoration on N2O exchange above an intensively managed grassland in Switzerland".

In addition a talk by Zscheischler J. et al. with contributions from Sebastian Wolf on "Short-term weather variability is an important control of interannual variability in carbon and water fluxes in temperate forests" was given.

New paper by Shiva Ghiasi et al. on external page"Agronomic and Economic Efficiency of Ground Tire Rubber and Rubber Ash Used As Zinc (Zn) Fertilizer Sources for Wheat"call_made was published in Journal of Plant Nutrition.

Article in Download"Schweiz am Sonntag" (PDF, 285 KB)vertical_align_bottom about fog in which Werner Eugster talks about the fog occurrence in Switzerland during the last years. Details from  external pageMeteoswisscall_made here.

Essen wir die Erde auf? Nina Buchmann joined a panel discussion during the Treffpunkt Science City Events on 10 November 2015. Watch the full video (01:22:22).

Mission accomplished! Since last week, we have the first automatic height-adaptable eddy covariance tower up and running, measuring CO2/H2O fluxes 365 days a year. The site is a sub-alpine grassland located at the ETH research station Alp Weissenstein (GR). Downloadsee a short video of the tower here (MP4, 8.7 MB)vertical_align_bottom. We thank our technical team, Patrick Koller, Florian Käslin, Thomas Baur and Philip Meier for putting all their effort in reaching this goal before winter 2015. Link to external pagecurrent data >>call_made

external pageWozu ist eigentlich Nebel gut?call_made Diese Frage versucht Werner Eugster in einer Sendung von external pageSRF einsteincall_made zu beantworten. Die Sendung wurde am 12. November 21:00 ausgestrahlt.

New paper by Dario Papale et al. with contributions from Lutz Merbold on external page"Effect of spatial sampling from European flux-towers for estimating carbon and water fluxes with artificial neural networks"call_made was published in Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences.

We warmly welcome Dr. Dörte Bachmann, who joined the Grassland Group again for the next couple of months.

4th Foresight Exercise of the EU DownloadStanding Committee of Agricultural Research (PDF, 3.1 MB)vertical_align_bottom (SCAR) available now. Dr. Luisa Last, also coauthor of the Swiss Foresight study contributed to this European exercise.

DownloadNew article (PDF, 96 KB)vertical_align_bottom by Kathrin Huber in BIOAKTUELL (9/2015) on LERNfeld, a science and education program with contributions from Sabina Keller for primary and secondary schools, providing a unique experience to cooperate in out-of-the-classroom research experiments and discussions.

New discussion paper by Janosz Balogh et al. with contributions from Werner Eugster on external page"Autotrophic component of soil respiration is repressed by drought more than the heterotrophic one in a dry grassland"call_made has become available in Biogeosciences Discussions.

New paper by Verma et al., with contribution from Petra D'Odorico on external pageImproving the performance of remote sensing models for capturing intra- and inter-annual variations in daily GPPcall_made has been published in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology.

DownloadNew article (PDF, 468 KB)vertical_align_bottom in GeoPanorama on LERNfeld, a science and education program with contributions from Sabina Keller 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.  

New paper by van Albert van Dijk et al., with contribution from Carmen Emmel and Lutz Merbold on external page"Rainfall interception and the coupled surface water and energy balance"call_made has been published in external pageAgricultural and Forest Meteorologycall_made.

The 2nd ICOS Ecosystem Monitoring Station Assembly took place 14th-16th September in Brno (hostet by czechglobe and Mendel University), Czech Republic. During the meeting the standardization of greenhouse gas measurements across Europe was discussed. Philip Meier, Lukas Hörtnagl and Lutz Merbold contributed to the development of several standardization protocols.

The 2nd ICOS-CH Annual Meeting tool place in Bern 10th September to discuss the achievements reached since last year. Read more under external pagewww.icos-switzerland.chcall_made

A new graphical user interface to access external pagenear-real-time (NRT) datacall_made from our research sites has been programmed by Lukas Hörtnagl during the last months. external pageClick herecall_made to directly look at the latest pictures from our research sites as well as core meteorological data.

This year´s Grassland Sciences Group retreat took place at Schloss Wartegg on the southern shore of Lake Constance.

We warmly welcome Prof. Joseph McFadden (University of California, Santa Barbara) who recently joined the Grassland Sciences group during his sabbatical lasting until March 2016.

We warmly welcome Dr. Xuguang Tang from the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology. Xuguang will join our group for the next year after having been awarded a external pageSwiss Excellence Scholarshipcall_made.

The external pageTechnical Release of the new FLUXNETcall_madesynthesis collection has become available today. The dataset includes measurements from 45 sites provided by PIs, site staff and institutions. The goal of the Technical Release is the evaluation of the data products and collection of feedback. It is open to everybody after an easy and automatic registration, but it is not designed to perform scientific activities.

Grassland group members (Nina Buchmann, Lutz Merbold and Sebastian Wolf) contributed data from three sites distributed across the globe: Russia (wetland), Panama (afforestation and pasture) and Zambia (miombo woodland).

We warmly welcome Ankit Shekhar who joined the GL group as an intern from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Ankit will work within the Jena Experiment.

New Downloadteaching material on plant spring phenology observationsvertical_align_bottom available online. This product for secondary schools (level I) was developed within the project CCES@school.

New Paper by Nicola Parazoo et al., with contributions from Sebastian Wolf entitled external page"Influence of ENSO and the NAO on terrestrial carbon uptake in the Texas-northern Mexico region"call_made has been published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

New paper by Jacqueline Stieger, Ines Bamberger, Nina Buchmann and Werner Eugster on external page"Validation of farm-scale methane emissions using nocturnal boundary layer budgets"call_made has been accepted in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.

New paper by Petra D'Odorico et al. on external page"The match and mismatch between photosynthesis and land surface phenology of deciduous forests"call_made has been accepted in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology.

Under the auspices of the Agricultural Sciences students of D-USYS, the Download58. World Congress of the International Association of Students in Agricultural and Related Sciences (PDF, 1.1 MB)vertical_align_bottom visited ETH Zurich. Prof. Nina Buchmann welcomed the participants and stressed the relevance of the topic of the congress: „How to feed the planet”.

New Book published as a result of a joint workshop of the COST Action ES0804 ABBA  and external pageECLAIRE projectcall_made: external page"Review and Integration of Biosphere-Atmosphere Modelling of Reactive Trace Gases and Volatile Aerosols"call_made.

New paper by  external pageMarco Lehmanncall_madeand Roland A. Werner et al. entitled external page"Malate as a key carbon source of leaf dark-respired CO2across different environmental conditions in potato plants"call_made is now available as open access online first paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

Agricultural research was presented in the Swiss Pavilion at external pageExpo Milano 2015call_made. Watch a video including a multimedia summary and an interview with Prof. Nina Buchmann here.

A Foresight study on Research for a Sustainable Swiss Food System carried out by the World Food System Center at ETH Zurich (chaired by Prof. Nina Buchmann) is now available online. click here for further information. Bundesrat Schneider-Amman presented the results at the external pageexpo2015call_made in Milano.

Some impressions from the intensive field campaign carried out at the Swiss Fluxnet site Oensingen (CH_OEN2) lead by Carmen Emmel and Petra D'Odorico can be found on the DiRad project page.

The excursion "Alpine meadows and pastures" (in German) took place at Alp Weissenstein yesterday. Samuel Schmid joined by Isabelle Gangnat (Animal Nutrition Group), Lutz Merbold and Hans-Rudolf Wettstein (Head of the ETH research stations) introduced 17 students to different plant communities, current grazing activities and ongoing research projects at 2000 m a.s.l..

New paper by Alexander Damm et al. with contributions from  Eugénie Paul-Limoges, Nina Buchmannand Werner Eugster  entitled "Far-red sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence shows ecosystem-specific relationships to grossprimary production: An assessment based on observational and modeling approaches" has been accepted in Remote Sensing of Environment.

external pageThe special issue in IEHS (Isotopes in Environmental and Health Studies)call_made dedicated to Professor Dr Hanns-Ludwig Schmidt on the occasion of his 85^th birthday is now available online. Roland A. Werner has been the lead guest editor for this Special Issue.

New paper by Carola Blessing et al. on external page"Allocation dynamics of recently fixed carbon in beech saplings in response to increased temperatures and drought"call_made is now available in Tree Physiology.

Nominated by Switzerland, Prof. Nina Buchmann was elected to serve on a committee for the external pageICSU, the International Council for Sciencecall_made, to help develop new global scientific initiatives, to review ICSU's scientific activities, and to advise the ICSU Executive Board. 

Here is a list of talks that were given or where members of the Grassland Sciences Group contributed to at external pageEGU General Assemblycall_made in Vienna last week:

1. external pageEGU2015-5947call_made "The influence of management on GHG fluxes over Central European grasslands" Lukas Hoertnagl, Michael Bahn, Matthias Barthel, Nina Buchmann, Werner Eugster, Katja Klumpp, Thomas Ladreiter-Knauss, Georg Wohlfahrt, and Lutz Merbold
2. external pageEGU2015-8692call_made "Warm Spring Reduced Impact of Summer Drought on Carbon Cycling" Sebastian Wolf, Trevor F. Keenan, Joshua B. Fisher, and Dennis Baldocchi
3. external pageEGU2015-2407call_made "More than just CO₂: Multiple trace gas exchange measurements at a temperate mountain grassland" Georg Wohlfahrt, Albin Hammerle, Lukas Hörtnagl, Ines Bamberger, and Armin Hansel
4. external pageEGU2015-9059call_made "Response of grassland soil respiration to drought: Results from an ecosystem manipulation experiment including 19 sites differing in productivity and diversity" Susanne Burri, Pascal Niklaus, Nina Buchmann, and Ansgar Kahmen
5. external pageEGU2015-9777call_made "The impact of different management techniques on carbon balance of a pine stand after windthrow" Klaudia Ziemblinska, Marek Urbaniak, Lutz Merbold, Bogdan H. Chojnicki, and Janusz Olejnik
6. external pageEGU2015-9750call_made "Plant traits as predictor of ecosystem carbon fluxes - a case study across European grasslands" Katja Klumpp, Michael Bahn, Manuel Acosta, Nuria Altimir, Cristina Gimeno, Marjan Jongen, Lutz Merbold, Eddy Moors, Kistina Pinter, and Olivier Darsonville
7. external pageEGU2015-13091call_made "Estimation of Swiss methane emissions by near surface observations and inverse modeling" Stephan Henne, Oney Brian, Markus Leuenberger, Ines Bamberger, Werner Eugster, Martin Steinbacher, Frank Meinhardt, and Dominik Brunner
8. external pageEGU2015-1021call_made "Linking carbon isotope signatures of nighttime leaf-respiratory and daytime assimilatory CO₂ fluxes observed with laser spectrometry under field conditions" Lydia Gentsch, Jérôme Ogée, Lisa Wingate, Patrick Sturm, Rolf Siegwolf, Roland A. Werner, Nina Buchmann, and Alexander Knohl
9. external pageEGU2015-15156call_made "Fast recovery of carbon fluxes in beech saplings after drought" Carola Blessing, Matti Barthel, Lydia Gentsch, and Nina Buchmann

A session external pageBG 1.7: Towards integrating greenhouse gas (GHG) budgets from terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems - co-sponsored by iLEAPScall_made was convened by Lutz Merbold, Celia Somlai , Tonya Del Sontro , Penelope Serrano Ortiz , Bert Gielen and Martin Wattenbach.

New paper by Benjamin Wolf et al. with contributions from Lutz Merbold entitled "First online isotopic characterization of N₂O emitted from intensively managed grassland" has been accepted in Biogeosciences.

Two posters were presented at this years external pageSwiss Global Change Daycall_made:

1. "Global Patterns of Biosphere-Atmosphere Energy Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems" by Sebastian Wolf et.al., and
2. "Swiss Contribution to Ecosystem Observations in ICOS – Integrated Carbon Observation System" by Werner Eugster and Lutz Merbold.

New publication by Roxana Petrescu et al. with contributions from Lutz Merbold entitled external page"The uncertain climate footprint of wetlands under human pressure"call_made has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Congratulations Doerte Bachmann to the Hans Vontobel Award 2015. In her doctoral thesis, Doerte examined why biomass production of diverse grassland is larger than that of less diverse grassland. Read the ETH life article.

Congratulations! Dr. Werner Eugster (*1964), Senior Scientist and Lecturer at ETH Zurich, has been appointed as Adjunct Professor at ETH Zurich. Werner Eugster is a recognised expert in several areas of micrometeorology, especially the exchange of trace gases between the biosphere and the atmosphere. He has an excellent international network of contacts and plays a leading role in several important organisations.

New Publication by Robert Finger and Nina Buchmann about "An ecological economic assessment of risk-reducing effects of species diversity in managed grasslands" in Ecological Economics. doi: external page10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.12.019call_made

New paper by Jianyang Xia with contributions from Nina Buchmann and Lutz Merbold entitled "Joint control of terrestrial gross primary productivity by plant phenology and physiology" in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi: external page10.1073/pnas.1413090112call_made

New paper by Roland Werner et al. on "Multi element (C, H, O) stable isotope analysis for the authentication of balsamic vinegars" has been accepted in Isotopes in Environmental and Health Studies.

A study by J. Ghashghaie et al. with contributions from Roland Werner entitled "Changes in δ13C of dark respired CO₂ and organic matter of different organs during early ontogeny in peanut plants" was also accepted in Isotopes in Environmental and Health Studies.

A publication by Carola Blessing, Matti Barthel and Nina Buchmann entitled Bias in estimated online leaf carbon isotope discrimination due to woody tissues has been published in Isotopes in Environmental and Health Studies. doi: external page10.1080/10256016.2015.1007050call_made

The Review on "Eddy covariance for quantifying trace gas fluxes from soils" by Werner Eugster and Lutz Merbold has been published in the 1^st Issue of external pageSOILcall_made.

We warmly welcome our newest group member Shiva Ghiasi. Shiva started as PhD student in February and will work with isotopes in Biochemistry.

New publication by Annett Lipowski et al. with contributions from Nina Buchmann on "Plasticity of functional traits of forb species in response to biodiversity" in Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. doi: external page10.1016/j.ppees.2014.11.003call_made

New publication by Benjamin Wolf et al. with contributions from Lutz Merbold on "First on-line isotopic characterization of N₂O emitted from intensively managed grassland" has been published in Biogeosciences Discussions. doi: external page10.5194/bgd-12-1573-2015call_made (This study was carried out on our external pageSwiss FluxNet site - Chamaucall_made).

New paper by Linda Feichtinger et al. with contributions from Nina Buchmann on "Trait-specific responses of Scots pine to irrigation on a short vs long time scale" in Tree Physiology. doi: external page10.1093/treephys/tpu114call_made.

Congratulations Linda!

The COST ES0804 ABBA Special Issue "Towards a full GHG balance of the biosphere" is now fully available within Biogeosciences (external pageopen accesscall_made, external pageshort summarycall_made). The Special Issue includes papers by Dennis Imer et al., Rebecca Hiller et al. and Lutz Merbold et al. from our group.

The latest publication by Alexandra Wright et al. with contributions from Nina Buchmann on the flooding event within the Jena Experiment has been published in Nature Communications. doi: external page10.1038/ncomms7092call_made

The newest publication by Doerte Bachmann et al. entitled "No Evidence of Complementary Water Use along a Plant Species Richness Gradient in Temperate Experimental Grasslands" has been published in PLOS one. doi: external page10.1371/journal.pone.0116367call_made

Congratulations Doerte!

New Publication by Ulrich Prechsl et al. about "No shift to a deeper water uptake depth in response to summer drought of two lowland and sub-alpine C3-grasslands in Switzerland" in Oecologia. doi: external page0.1007/s00442-014-3092-6call_made

An interview with Nina Buchmann entitled "Wir können alle ernähren..." by the e-magazin ALIMENTARIUM.

This month has been Peter Pluess's last working day in our research group. Thank you for all your patience and excellent work during this time. We wish you all the best for the next stage in your life.

The most recent publication by Eugenie Paul-Limoges et al. entitled "Effect of clearcut harvesting on the carbon balance of a Douglas-fir forest" has been accepted in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology.

We warmly welcome the newest Grassland Sciences Group member: Patrick Koller. Patrick started as a technician in the beginning of January and complements the available technical expertise in our group.