2017
December
Is this music?? Yes, it was! A group of ETH and Uni ZH members, from students to long-term staff members at USYS, HEST and other departments visited us on the last working day before Xmas and played christmas carols in the LFW atrium. LFW "inhabitants" came out of their offices, listened and applauded. Thanks a lot!! (22 December 2017)
Eight interviews in three weeks: we were very busy finding new group members for PhD projects... Luckily, we were successful: three, maybe even four new members have been recruited. Interviews for the technical position will be carried out in January.
Congratulations to Neringa Mannerheim who successfully defended her doctoral thesis on "Carbon allocation between the canopy and the root system in the tropical tree Ceiba pentandra: Transfer velocity, magnitude and biotic controls" (20 December 2017).
Grassland Christmas, this time in the CHN building: great appetizers from around the world, lots of cheese fondue, many young and old faces, current and former group members - a highly enjoyable evening. Thanks to all! (6 December 2017)
Grassland Xmas 2017
ETH Unterwegs in DownloadLiechtenstein (PDF, 3.3 MB) - and Lukas' VR movie to Davos was again a highlight! (3 December 2017)
November
Lukas Hörtnagl, Anna Gilgen, Annika Ackermann and Sabina Keller participated in the Treffpunkt Science City, the open public science program by ETH. Visitors could go on a virtual reality 3D tour to our group's Swiss Fluxnet tower at Davos. Moreover, they could observe the CO2 exchange of a Swiss grassland during day and night conditions in real-time. With over 2300 visitors the event has been a great success! (26 November 2017)
Nina Buchmann gave an invited talk about "Swiss agroecosystems: Drivers of or driven by climate change?" within the external pageEnvironmental engineering seminar series at EPFL. (21 November 2017)
At today's General Assembly of external pageICOS-RI, the observer status of Switzerland was continued. (17 November 2017)
Many group members participated actively in the external page15th Swiss Geosciences Meeting in Davos: talks by Mana Gharun, Nina Buchmann and Carmen Emmel were complemented by posters from Lukas Hörtnagl and Philip Meier. Find the corresponding abstracts external pagehere. (17/18 November 2017)
The ICOS-CH Annual National Meeting took place in Davos to inform all participants about the newest developments, upgrades and the next steps in the labelling process of the ecosystem site Davos and the external pageatmospheric site Jungfraujoch (17 November 2017)
October
Lukas Hörtnagl gave a talk at the external pageSwissForestLab – LWF workshop in Birmensdorf on "Two decades of ecosystem fluxes above a sub-alpine coniferous forest in Switzerland" (31 October 2017)
Best Poster Award at the 2017 Annual Symposium of the World Food System Center of ETH Zurich went to Sergei Schaub for his poster on 'Value of species diversity in grasslands’, with contributions by Buchmann N, Lüscher A and Finger R. (25.10.2017)
At the Annual Symposium of the World Food System Center, not only science was in the focus. Many group members had prepared posters for this event. Also the changes for the Chair and the Executive Director positions were a topic at the very end of an interesting evening. It was a great time as Founding Chair of such a lively center. I wish all involved great results and lots of energy and fun to spread the news and implement the findings! (25 October 2017)
WFSC Annual Symposium 2017
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6 years as Chair -
Thank you!
During this year's IsoCycles 2017 conference on Reaching an integrated use of stable isotopes to constrain biogeochemical nutrient cycles, Nina Buchmann gave the first keynote on "Stable oxygen and hydrogen isotopes to study ecohydrology in forest ecosystems". (16 October 2017, World Food Day)
We warmly welcome Mercedes Ibañez who joined our Grassland Sciences Group for the next two months as an academic guest from the external pageUniversity of Lleida, Spain. (16 October 2017)
Under the patronage of external pagePubliFarm, the Grassland Sciences group contributed to a large exhibit at the external pageOlma in St.Gallen. During a special show (external pageSonderschau), visitors could experience how to shop with biodiversity and climate change in mind, do experiments to learn more about climate change and agriculture, or listen to talks given by many group members about the links between biodiversity, agriculture and climate change (12.-22. October 2017).
OLMA October 12th until 22nd, 2017
September
It took 15 years to collect the data and two years to write the paper. But now external pageWeisser et al. is published with contributions by Nina Buchmann and many former members of the group: the 73 page synthesis paper, a whole volume of Basic and Applied Ecology, about 15 years of biodiversity research within the external pageJena Experiment. (September 2017)
At this year’s external pageScience Communication conference in Solothurn, the Agora project PubliFarm was contributing with an exhibit on agricultural research and sustainable consumption. The same topic was addressed at the external pageScientifica in Zurich three weeks ago. (21 to 22 September)
Congratulations to external pageClaude Herzog who successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "Growth and decay of Scots pine roots" (18 September 2017).
Shiva Ghiasi's paper on Fractionation and bioavailability of zinc (Zn) in the rhizosphere of two wheat cultivars with different Zn deficiency tolerance by the time she worked on her master studies and funded by SNF, just got published in external pageGeoderma
This week, 21 ecologists, agricultural, economic and political scientists met to discuss the Valuation of grassland species diversity and related ecosystem services in Europe. Short input statements, lively discussions in break-out groups, in the plenum and during the breaks resulted in many great ideas how to proceed and in plans what to put together as papers and projects. A great cross-disciplinary success! (11-13 September 2017)
Dr. Mana Gharun joined our group and will add additional expertise in plant ecophysiology to the group. (8 September 2017).
This year's external pageScientifica had the topic "What data can tell". Clearly our data tell us a lot, and so we told the Zurich public about our data, our research themes and approaches. During three days, our booth in the main building - with the title "external pageWald, Wiese, Acker – Treibhausgasen auf der Spur" was visited by many. A big thank you to the group members who made our exhibit a great success! (1 to 3 September 2017)
scientifica 2017
Dr. Christoph Bachofen's research has been featured in the current SNF Horizons magazine. Read about Downloadhow pine trees adjust to drought (PDF, 1.1 MB).
August
An email in May about "Research during summer?", triggered the visit of Peter Rüegg from ETH News during our field work for the Leaf2Canopy project at the Lägeren site in August. In this project we aim to understand how trees balance their use of light, water and nutrients in the canopy, and how this affects the CO2 uptake of forests.
We warmly welcome Yujie Liu who was awarded a fellowship from the China Scholarship Council in 2017. She will work as a PhD student in the Grassland Sciences Group for the next four years (30 August 2017).
This year's retreat brought us to the "Seminar-Hotel Rigi am See" at the Lake of Lucerne (28./29.08.17). For the newcomers, it was a great opportunity to get to know the group.
Some impressions from our retreat
The external page10th International Carbon Dioxide Conference was held in Interlaken this week (21 - 25 August 2017). Our group presented two posters on measurement and modeling results (p. 287 and 296 in the external pageabstract book). The organisors took some interesting measures to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by all participants. Read more external pagehere. To be adopted elsewhere!!!
Who said that preprints are not worth it? A manuscript coauthored by Neringa Mannerheim and Nina Buchmann and uploaded to the preprint server for biology external pagebioRxiv had caught the attention of Nature. "external pageWhy 14 ecology labs teamed up to watch grass grow" is the title of a news article in the current Nature issue. (15 August 2017)
Dr. Valentin Klaus joined our group today and will add additional expertise in grassland sciences to the group. (15 August 2017)
A warm welcome to Qing Sun who will work on her PhD the next three years within the project RELOAD. (14 August 2017)
July
New paper by Hua Lin et al. with contributions by Lukas Hörtnagl and Eugenie Paul-Limoges on Quantifying deforestation and forest degradation with thermal response was accepted in external pageScience of the Total Environment.
Our LERNfeld on YouTube? Yes, watch external pagehere. (24 July 2017)
New paper by Daniela Braun et al. with contributions by Eugenie Paul-Limoges and Nina Buchmann on From instantaneous to continuous: Using imaging spectroscopy and in situ data to map two productivity-related ecosystem services was accepted in external pageEcological Indicators.
The excursion of the WSL research group on Forest Soils and Biogeochemistry at the Lägeren site. Eugénie Paul-Limoges described the measurements of our group at the site and some of her thesis results. Christoph Bachofen showed some of the new measurement setups for his project (5 July 2017).
Lägeren Site
A new paper by Christoph Bachofen in external pageJournal of Ecology addresses the research question: How do trees react to drought? Do they really accumulate carbohydrates to survive a drought, as a long-standing hypothesis postulates? Read a external pagepress commentary on this study (in German).
A warm welcome to Aldara Sabuz Millán who will stay with us as external pageIAESTE exchange student from Sevilla until end of September. (3 July 2017)
How to address food system aspects
June
Congratulations to Eugénie Paul-Limoges who successfully defended her doctoral thesis on "Biosphere-atmosphere CO2 exchange and its link to sun-induced fluorescence in a mixed forest and a cropland" (28 June 2017).
Almost 90 years old and by no means tired: The Austrian Academy of Sciences held a external pagesymposium for external pageProf. em. Dr. Friedrich Ehrendorfer on "Vielfalt unter Druck". Nina Buchmann opened the scientific part of the event with a talk about "Alpine Ökosysteme unter multiplem Druck" (Alpine ecosystems under multiple pressures"). 21 June 2017
PubliFarm participated in the Umwelttag in Bern, providing environmental info about our day-to-day food. Here, a few impressions from the external pageBotanical Garden in Bern (17 June 2017).
What does the Grassland Sciences group have to do big data? Read more in the current Globe volume (in DownloadEnglish (PDF, 399 KB), auf DownloadDeutsch (PDF, 402 KB)).
Excursion of the “Altpflanzenbauern” at Oensingen field site. Members of Agroscope and the Grassland Sciences group provided information about current research. Dr. Carmen Emmel presented the measurements at CH-OE2 and some of the newest results of our research. (13 June 2017)
Oensingen
What should be called "Smart Farming"? The short opinion paper by Walter, Finger, Huber and Buchmann has the answer: read the opinion paper in external pagePNAS.
New paper by Renduo Zhang et al. published using 403 site-years of ecosystem flux data from 101 sites with contributions by Nina Buchmann on the Effect of climate warming on the annual terrestrial net ecosystem CO2 exchange globally in the boreal and temperate region in external pageNature/scientificreports.
The first Research Day for the public has taken place at the Schürhof farm in Aesch BL on June 10th 2017. The event was part of the Publifarm project and has been organized by Sabina Keller. Interested lay people could learn about agriculture in the context of biodiversity and climate change with hands-on research experiments on earthworms, cows and pests. In addition, they could discuss with young scientists from ETH.
The following photos by Florine Münger; Forschungstag Schürhof Aesch 2017.
Research Day at the Schürhof farm in Aesch BL
During the last day of the semester, we visited the external pageGräserland, located at ZHAW Wädenswil, with our 2nd semester students. Topics were the relevance of grasses in the world food system as well as our own consumption, including food waste. (2 June 2017)
Excursion to Gräserland
A warm welcome to Ivo Beck and Paul Linwood, who add new technical expertise to our group. (1 June 2017)
May
"Den Regenwürmern auf der Spur", this was the title of an article published by the DownloadSarganserländer (PDF, 185 KB) newspaper on 23 Mai 2017, reporting about LERNfeld activities on a farm in Mels.
"DownloadAgriculture: The driven and the driver of climate change (PDF, 3.3 MB)", this is the title of the most recent edition of the science stories on our group´s research, published by EU grants access (in English). Or you can listen to the external pageinterview with Nina Buchmann.
Ecophys in a different setting: sun, fun with instruments outside, and insight into different approaches how to study plants. Today's plant ecophysiology lab, coached by many of the group, offered our 4th semester students a very different perspective into what ecophys is all about. (17 May 2017)
Ecophys lab 2017
Congrats to Sämi Schmid!!! It is finally done. (17 May 2017)
Offer to teachers within LERNfeld. On 10 June 2017, teachers can check out the teaching materials on agriculture in the context of climate change and biodiversity. external pageInformation can be found here (in German).
external pageFurther education within LERNfeld (for teachers at secondary school levels). Investigate the effects of climate change on agriculture with your school class. Young researchers show their results. When? Wednesday, 13 September 2017. Where? Eschikon-Strickhof.
Congratulations to Marc-André Cormier who successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "Biochemical and metabolic effects on the hydrogen isotope composition of organic compounds in plants" (5 May 2017).
April
The external pageEGU European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2017, has been held from April 23rd until 28th in Vienna. There were poster presentations of Susanne Burri, Lutz Merbold, Philip Meier, Kathrin Fuchs, Werner Eugster, Lukas Hörtnagl, Nina Buchmann, Carmen Emmel and the ICOS-CH Consortium.
"How can we feed 9 to 10 billion people in the future without further jeopardizing our climate?", was the question of a reader of the newspaper DownloadSchweiz am Sonntag (PDF, 360 KB) (posed in German: Wie können wir in Zukunft 9 bis 10 Milliarden Menschen ernähren, ohne das Klima weiter zu belasten?), answered by Nina Buchmann and Hans Herren. (29 April 2017)
An article about ICOS Switzerland (and the funding for the next four years) has been published in the external pageProClim News. (20 April 2017).
Eugenie Paul-Limoges gave a talk about “Sun-induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence to Link Leaf and Ecosystem Photosynthesis” at the 10th external pageEARSeL SIG Imaging Spectroscopy Workshop. (20 April 2017)
Mission accomplished! After 16 months, our Grassland Inventory GIN is ready to be used. After today´s introduction, the roll-out for group members will start. GIN combines info on sites, instrumentation, sensor calibration and maintenance and much more.... (13 April 2017)
We warmly welcome Stephanie Westerhuis as a new PhD within the project Fog4Cast to our group. (3 April 2017)
March
Great news! ICOS-CH Phase 2 got funded by the SNF for the next four years! Another 4 years into the 20 years of ICOS RI!! We especially liked one statement of the reviewers when asked about scientific relevance, originality and topicality: "It is a no brainer that the observational efforts like this are absolutely essential during Anthropocene" .... We could not agree more! (30 March 2017)
Selina Ulmann, Bachelor student in Agricultural Sciences, uploaded her two instructional videos on external pageKleegras and external pageStallfütterung on youtube today (in German). Watch two amazing stories about the farmer external pageKleinjogg (Jakob Gujer, born in 1718) who introduced clover grass mixtures in Switzerland and studied the use of farmyard manure for fertilization of the traditional three field crop rotation systems in the 18th century. The two videos were produced with the Multimedia Services at ETH Zurich (29 March 2017)
We offer a position for a technician to support our team. For more info, please see external pagehere. (27 March 2017)
Interested in communicating science to school pupils? Read a external pageblog about our LERNFeld project. (13 March 2017)
We offer two positions, one for a PhD student in plant ecophysiology and one as a postdoc / senior scientist in agro-ecology. For more info, please see here. (11 March 2017)
Good bye and good luck for your Maturarbeit, Katja! We enjoyed having you in the lab. See you as an "Agro student" soon.... (10 March 2017)
New publication by Gonsamo et al. with contributions by Nina Buchmann on global phenology and its link to atmospheric 13CO2 in external pageGlobal Change Biology. Our results suggest an increase in soil respiration in the Northern Hemisphere, cancelling out CO2 uptake gains from a longer growing season.
Where the greenhouse gases go? was the major question addressed in the DownloadSNF Magazine of March 2017 (PDF, 878 KB). ICOS-CH and the flux measurements at our site Davos give some answers. (4 March 2017)
Globi visiting ETH and hugging ETH professors.... Read more about Globi's adventures in the new book. (2 March 2017)
Welcome to our new Master's student Annina Winkler. She will be working on the effects of farm-yard manure inputs on soil carbon stocks and and soil carbon sequestration during an arable crop rotation at Oensingen. (1 March 2017)
February
Interested to carry out a Bachelor or Master thesis in our group? Check out the new topics, updated today. (25 February 2017)
We warmly welcome Katharine Waller as a highschool intern for the next three weeks in our group. (20 February 2017)
The Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Pflanzenbau-wissenschaften SGPW celebrated its 25th anniversary. At its external pageannual meeting, Dr. Anna Gilgen gave an overview talk on Ökosystemleistungen von Grasland (Ecosystem services in grassland), based on results obtained in our group over the last years. (16 February 2017)
Our paper in Global Change Biology external pageFrank et al. (2015) was one of the 15 most-downloaded papers in 2016 – similar to 2015!
The external pageSwiss Data Science Center (SDSC) has been launched officially in Bern today (6 February 2017). Bringing data scientists, computer scientists and so-called "domain experts" together will provide new insights into what data can tell us, e.g., in the domain Environment. At least, this is the plan. Since 2016, we work closely together with the SDSC, Dr. Lukas Hörtnagl and Dr. Carmen Emmel attended the inauguration. Lukas particiapted in a panel, giving insights into where such a Center could go, based on experiences within external pageICOS and the Swiss FluxNet. We will stay involved!
We warmly welcome Aurora Marchetti who started today as an apprentice in the Grassland Sciences Group. (6 February 2017)
January
From Isodopes to Isotopeteers: 19 Master's and PhD students from ETH and abroad got introduced into Isotopics, during our Master course Stable Isotope Ecology. During seven mornings in the lecture hall, they were introduced into light isotopes and their applications by ETH staff and colleagues from PSI, Empa and WSL. During six afternoons in the lab, they could find out themselves what isotopes can do. At the last afternoon, Friday, 27 January 2017, students presented their results on leaf water enrichment, tree ring analyses, plant gas exchange, pod and fruit labeling as well as "beer isotopes", ending a fruitful week with fighting food (and drink) waste....
Some impressions from the IsoEcology course
"We scientists shape science", this was the topic of a external pagecongress organized by SCNAT. In different workshops, current challenges were discussed and potential solutions developed. For workshop summaries and further information, click external pagehere. (26 & 27 January 2017)
external pageNina Buchmann was invited to give a talk about "Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas Fluxes" at the 14th external pageGCOS Roundtable on 26 January 2017. The Swiss contribution to GCOS, the external pageGlobal Climate Observing System, is hosted by MeteoSwiss and brings together those interested in climate observations.
Our highly cited paper Perez-Harguindeguy et al. (2013) with the title external pageNew handbook for standardised measurement of plant functional traits worldwide has been translated into Spanish. Find the Spanish version external pagehere.
New publication by Hofer et al. in external pageAgriculture, Ecosystems and the Environment, with contributions by Nina Buchmann. Interestingly, N fertilisation improved the drought resistance of non-legumes, while legumes were not impressed by the drought. (2 January 2017)
Have a happy and healthy 2017!
