2018
December
A very busy and successful year 2018 is almost over. It started with many new team members and ended with a reassuring evaluation, also of our group. Time was flying, so have a look below for a "2018 in fast motion". It is difficult to highlight single events, since we had so many of them and all meant a lot to me as the Chair of the Grassland Sciences group. I want to say a big THANK YOU to all group members. Without them, all these events and success would not have been possible. It is a great pleasure to work with them all. They make the team what it is. I wish all of you and your families a Merry Christmas, some quiet time to relax over the holidays and a great start into the New Year 2019. (23 December 2018)
In the last working week, good news came in: an old data set was finally published in PloS One. Burri et al. could show that plant species richness affects the response of soil respiration to drought, via changes in root and above-ground biomass. Interested in complicated interactions? Read the external pagepapercall_made yourself. (21 December 2018)
At the ETH Christmas Event 2018, President Lino Guzzella acknowledges the work of the Staff Commission (PeKo), including Nicole Staubli, our group´s administative asssistant! (18 December 2018)
The assembly of the multi-actor project SUPER-G in Belfast was attended by Valentin Klaus and colleagues from USYS and external pageAgroscopecall_made. Besides discussing first results and work planning for 2019, we also had a look at the brand new external pageSUPER-Gcall_made homepage and visited a research farm on permanent grassland. (15-16 December 2018)
Nina Buchmann was reelected for a second term (starting 1 August 2019) as Head of Department by the Department´s Conference. (14 December 2018)
The AGU Honors 2018 Ceremony took place during the external pageAGU Fall meetingcall_made in Washington, DC. Nina Buchmann became a Class of 2018 external pageAGU Fellowcall_made, in honor of her scientific achievements and leadership. (12 December 2018)
AGU Honors 2018 Ceremony
The RELOAD project in the Swiss documentary show "external pageEinsteincall_made" (in German). See which techniques and measurements are used. The first results: Simulated drought, stronger than the 2018 drought in Switzerland, reduced corn yields significantly. Watch the full show (about 31 min) or the parts referring to our project (1:30 to 4:41, 6:52 to 8:28, 14:10 to 16:28, 20:20 to 22:25, 27:08 to 29:33 min). (6 December 2018)
Fondue Chinoise
Tree age explains 62% of the variance in annual net ecosystem CO2 exchange (NEE) and should therefore be accounted for in spatio-temporal models. This (among other findings) was published today by external pageBesnard et al.call_made in Environmental Research Letters, with contributions of Nina Buchmann and Lukas Hörtnagl. The study was based on 126 forest eddy-covariance flux sites worldwide. (8 December 2018)
Our group became an official member of the external pageSwissForestLabcall_made, a research platform and infrastructural network. (5 December 2018)
Iris Feigenwinter, Andreas Riedl, Regine Maier, Qing Sun, Yafei Li and Yujie Liu all contributed poster presentations to the Session “Atmospheric Processes and Interactions with the Biosphere” (co-chaired by Susanne Burri) at the external pageSwiss Geoscience Meeting 2018call_made in Berne (1 December 2018)
November
The ICOS-CH Consortium and some invited guests met again for the Administrative ICOS-CH Annual Meeting, this year in Berne at the House of Academies (30 November 2018)
Finally, after many years of discussions and feedbacks on drafts, pre-final drafts, final drafts, improved final drafts, 14 papers have been published in the journal external pageInternational Agrophysicscall_made with the long-awaited protocols of external pageICOS-RIcall_made. Many of the group, involved in ICOS-CH, are coauthors. Congrats for all this endurance and great work!! (30 November 2018)
Evaluation time! Each 6-7 years, the departments of ETH Zurich are being evaluated, this year, it was our turn, D-USYS. Research, teaching, technology transfer and outreach were assessed. For 40 min we had six of the reviewers also in our group. In four blocks we presented our work over the last six years: Grassland research for science, teaching and outreach; Linking innovation and science for a sustainable agriculture; Stable isotopes in ecosystem research and teaching; and 20+ years of forest research were the topics. (27 November 2018)
Evaluation 2018
Nina Buchmann has been identified as "Highly Cited Researcher 2018" by Clarivate Analytics. Highly Cited Researchers are those in the top one percentile of all citation counts in their respective fields, based on Web of Science. The time period of 2006 to 2016 has been considered. Nina Buchmann qualified in the cross-field category. She is one of seven researchers at D-USYS, out of 18 at ETH Zurich. See the full list external pageherecall_made. (26 November 2018)
The new info board in Davos is finally installed (15 November 2018)
Article in the Tagesanzeiger about the "DownloadEnergy bundle for a better world (PDF, 905 KB)vertical_align_bottom", Nina Buchmann. Also external pageonlinecall_made, slightly different version. (10 November 2018)
The annual meeting of our Belmont Forum project DEVIL, Delivering Food Security on Limited Land, took place in Ubatuba, in Brazil. All partners shared their newest results and data, detailed plans for further analyses, papers, the next summerschool (organized by the WFSC) and outreach were discussed. (5-7 November 2018)
October
Im Projekt LERNfeld wird versucht, die DownloadLandwirte für einen sorgsamen Umgang mit Biodiversität zu motivieren (PDF, 1.4 MB)vertical_align_bottom.(October 2018)
"Effect of environmental conditions on sun-induced fluorescnce in a mixed forest and a cropland" published by external pageEugénie Paul-Limogescall_made et al. in external pageRemote Sensingcall_made (24 October 2018)
We warmly welcome Donika Demaj who joined our Grassland Sciences Group as an apprentice for the next 12 months (22 October 2018)
WP2 meeting of the SUPER-G project on permanent grasslands in Wageningen (NL): interesting, fun, tiring, lots of info provided on the excursion to Dutch grasslands on peat soils and many new ideas for work to follow up. (17-19 October 2018)
The Flying Tree Top Sampler external pageFTTS papercall_made is now out in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. Watch the short external pagevideo clipcall_made to see the FTTS in action! (18 October 2018)
As last year, the Grassland Sciences group participated in the external pageOLMA 2018call_made, the Swiss Fair for Agriculture and Nutrition in St. Gallen. This time we showed a Virtual Reality movie about the carbon budget of a cropland, based on data of our flux site Oensingen and programmed together with the Zurich University of the Arts external pageZHfKcall_made. (11-21 October 2018)
Also research stations need a makeover sometimes, so Markus Staudinger and Iris Feigenwinter went to Chamau to dig out old and broken soil sensors to prepare the station for the project SUPER-G. While digging holes of 1 meter depth, they met the reason why some of the sensors did not work anymore… (11 October 2018)
We started to dig...
September
And this defense by Kathrin Fuchs on 27 September 2018 was also an anniversary for Nina Buchmann: 50 doctoral students successfully finished under her supervision during her career. Thus, she brought a yummy chocolate cake for Kathrin who looked rather suprised at the candles saying "50" .....
And yet another successfull thesis finished: congratulations to Kathrin Fuchs who defended her thesis on "Mitigation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Intensively Managed Grassland". (27 September 2018)
Congratulations to Shiva Ghiasi: She successfully defended her doctoral thesis on "Carbon isotope fractionation during leaf and root respiration as a function of nitrogen nutrition". (21 September 2018)
"Management matters: Testing a mitigation strategy for nitrous oxide emissions using legumes on intensively managed grassland" clearly shows how substituting mineral fertilizer with a higher legume fraction reduces N2O emissions. The new external pagepapercall_made of Kathrin Fuchs et al. about an experiment at the Chamau has been published in Biogeosciences. (16 September 2018)
Drought in Switzerland: Raphael Wittwer from Agroscope, a partner within our joint project RELOAD, talks with the external pageSRFcall_made about first results from the manipualtion experiment, simulating extreme drought over arable land. This even made it into the external pageTagesschaucall_made (see 16:24 to 18:34 min)!! (15 September 2018)
The external page48th Annual Meetng of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerlandcall_made took place in Vienna this year. And Nina Buchmann was invited to give one of the external pagekeynotescall_made. Her topic: Grassland ecology and sustainable management, friends or foes? (10-14 September 2018)
Several group members attended the external page3rd ICOS Science Conferencecall_made in Prague and gave posters (Sue Burri, Lukas Hörtnagl) and talks (Mana Gharun, Philip Meier) or just listened and networked (Nina Buchmann). It was great to see the progress in science and data sharing! (11-14 September 2018)
The external pageKULINATAcall_made took place in Berne, among the exhibits: our project PubliFarm. Têtê-à-Têtê with sustainability (8-21 September 2018)
KULINATA
Forschungstag at external pageKULINATAcall_made within our project PubliFarm on a farm close to the city of Berne. In the morning we hosted a school class and in the afternoon, the event was open to the public (12 September 2018)
Forschungstag PubliFarm
Valentin Klaus together with colleagues from Germany (Kathrin Kiehl) and Estonia (Lena Neuenkamp) organized a session on urban restoration at the external pageEuropean Conference on Ecological Restorationcall_made held in Reykjavik, Iceland. Besides a number of interesting talks, the session also brought up intense discussions on how “urban ecological restoration” can be clearly defined and how to facilitate practical approaches and knowledge transfer (9-13 September 2018)
"Integrated management of a Swiss cropland is not sufficient to preserve its soil carbon pool in the long term" published by Carmen Emmel et al. in external pageBiogeosciencescall_made. (6 September 2018)
“Novel twig sampling method by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)” published by Florian Käslin et al. in external pageFrontiers in Forests and Global Changecall_made (5 September 2018)
"Genetic yield gains of winter wheat in Germany over more than 100 years (1895-2007) under contrasting fertilizer applications” published by Hella Ahrends et al. in collaboration with Werner Eugster in external pageEnvironmental Research Letterscall_made.
August
Group retreat 2018 to Einsiedeln. Among the usual topics we also discussed how to enjoy work in science and to leave the "survival mode" behind. We also visited the Milch-Manufaktur in Einsiedeln and met the "cheese whisperer" ... (29/30 August 2018)
Retreat 2018
Fredy, visiting us in the seminar room discussion on an important topic "How to decide what to do?" discussion on an important topic "How to enjoy work in science?" more discussions, probably about upcoming PhD defences
Our newest study from the Jena Experiment shows that, in addition to species richness, plant evolutionary history plays a critical role in regulating year-to-year variation of biomass production in grasslands. Read the full paper in external pageNature Ecology and Evolutioncall_made here. Interested how to write a multi-authored synthesis paper? Here the external pagestory behindcall_made. (27 August 2018)
The next step towards the Class 1 labeling is done: we submit near-real time data from our forest site Davos to the Ecosystem Thematic Center of external pageICOS RIcall_made!! A big thank you to all who made this possible!! (27 August 2018)
The external pageNational Climate Observing Systemcall_made inventary has been updated by GCOS this year. Read the two Downloadpages (PDF, 835 KB)vertical_align_bottom about our Swiss FluxNet network. (24 August 2018)
Werner Eugster was invited to present a keynote on “Direct gas flux measurements from surface waters” at the 21st International Workshop on external pagePhysical Processes in Natural Waterscall_made, Solothurn, Switzerland (22 August 2018)
Below-ground resource partitioning alone cannot explain the biodiversity–ecosystem function relationship! No experimental evidence for resource complementarity based on tracer studies. Read about these findings by Jesch et al. and the Jena Experiment in external pageJournal of Ecologycall_made (21 August 2018)
The first external pagesummer schoolcall_made of the external pageSwiss Forest Labcall_made is currently on-going in Davos. Werner Eugster and Mana Gharun introduced the 25 international students to our flux site at Davos during the first day´s excursion on 19 August 2018. Nina Buchmann gave a talk about "Ecosystem carbon dynamics: Fluxes, C sequestration and reactions to the environment". (19 to 24 August 2018)
After almost two years, we also said "Farewell" to Ying Liu who worked with us during her Chinese Excellence Scholarship for 22 months. A large water labeling study, one published paper, two more in the pipeline and a successful PhD defense in China! Keep on going!! (15 August 2018)
Class of 2018 AGU Fellow: Nina Buchmann was recognized for her "visionary leadership and scientific excellence which have fundamentally advanced research in biogeosciences". This honor was announced by the external pageAmerican Geophysical Unioncall_made on 9 August 2018.
Swiss National Day - a holiday in Switzerland. 1 August 2018 in Australia: Nina Buchmann giving a seminar talk at James Cook University in Cairns (and per external pagevideocall_made in Townsville) within the external pageTropical Environmental and Sustainability Sciencescall_made seminar series.
July
Regine Maier, Valentin Klaus and Iris Feigenwinter went soil sampling for the project SUPER-G at the Chamau research site. It was a sunny day with air temperature exceeding 30°C, a hot day or “Hitzetag” in meteorological terms. 115 soil samples at 30 different locations around the eddy covariance station have been collected. The samples will be analyzed in the lab to determine changes in soil carbon stocks since 2005 (preceding soil sampling) at a permanent grassland site. (19 July 2018)
Field Work at Chamau
Wissenschaftler für einen Tag (18 July 2018)
A warm farewell to Kritika Grover who stayed with us for two months on an internship. Thanks for coming and joining the group. We will keep track of the machine learning algorithm you have developed!!! (15 July 2018)
Grass-fed livestock – a climate solution? Watch a video on external pageGrazed and Confused?call_made which sets out to answer the question: Can grazing livestock help to mitigate climate change? If so, by how much? A product of our joint project DEVIL. (4 July 2018)
We warmly welcome Xingyu Hu, who is a Bachelor student at Tsinghua University, Beijing in China. She joined our group for an internship for 2 months. (2 July 2018)
June
Excursion to Alp Weissenstein, always a great experience! This year, Anna K. Gilgen and Valentin Klaus joined Michael Kreuzer and Hans-Ruedi Wettstein and showed our Agricultural Sciences students what research is done at the Alp, what vegetation grows and how alpine management is done. (25/26 June 2018)
AWS excursion
Congratulations to Simone Quatrini who successfully defended his doctoral thesis on "Mobilizing blended finance for sustainable development: experience and lessons from the investment fund for land degradation neutrality (LDN Fund)" (25 June 2018).
The Grassland Sciences group participated at the Kangaroo goes Science Day.The hundred best girls of class level seven who had taken part in the Kangaroo Mathematics Competition in March were invited to visit ETH Zurich. Twenty four of those visited our lab to experience hands-on science. They learned about the responses of plants to drought and flooding: they measured stomatal conductance, observed reduction in CO2 concentations due to photosynthesis and examined stomata under the microscope. The girls were coached by Annika Ackermann, Anna K. Gilgen and Sabina Keller from our team. Watch a short movie external pageherecall_made. (22 June 2018)
Kangaroo goes Science Day: 24 girls visited Grassland Sciences
The lab protocol: precise note taking... (Foto: Monika Krichel) Annika shows how to prepare the leaf for precise measurements (Foto: Monika Krichel) Sabina explaining leaf CO2 exchange (Foto: Monika Krichel) Observing photosynthesis while measuring CO2 (Foto: Monika Krichel) Examining leaf imprints (Foto: Monika Krichel) Measuring stomatal conductance (Foto: Monika Krichel)
"Tackling food system challenges through experiential education", this is the title of a new publication by Grant et al. in external pageGaiacall_made in which we describe our approach to and design criteria for summer schools about the World Food System. Experiences of many summer schools carried out by the WFSC and our DEVIL project helped to identify the most critical aspects. (20 June 2018)
We warmly welcome Gicele Silva Duarte Sa, who is in her 10th period of the Environmental Engineering Bachelors program of the University of the State of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Within her external pageIAESTEcall_made exchange program, she joined our group for an internship of 5 and half months. (19 June 2018)
The kick-off meeting of our new H2020 project SUPER-G on SUstainable PERmanent Grassland systems and policies was held in Lisbon, Portugal. Lots of info, new colleagues and a great field trip to the Alentejo region with their Montado systems (cork oaks over pasture) was an excellent start. (13 to 15 June 2018)
It is done: The laser spectrometer for CH4 and N2O measurements and the IRGA for CO2 and H2O vapor fluxes have been installed at Oensingen, together with its own mobile eddy-covariance tower. Our tech team has worked hard to start the measurements for InnoFarm. We are curious how these non-CO2 fluxes at a cropland compare to those at Chamau, a grassland, where we measure them since 2012. In particular, Regine is happy, the PhD student in InnoFarm. (14 June 2018)
InnoFarm set up
Interested in plant traits, what they can tell and what the pitfalls are? Christiane Roscher published some great papers recently with data from the Jena Experiment, with contribution of Marlen Gubsch, a former PhD student, and Nina Buchmann. Two of them are already available with external pageOikoscall_made and external pageEcologycall_made, two more are accepted in Ecology and external pagePerspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematicscall_made. Thus, stay tuned! (May and June 2018)
Christoph had a great idea: let´s visit the external pageBaumwipfelpfadcall_made in Mogelsberg which just had opened last month. And we did! Great species diversity, wonderful sights within the canopy of this mixed forest. (7 June 2018)
Canopy walk way
Only for those without fear of height (Foto: Nina Buchmann)
A very tall birch (Foto: Nina Buchmann) Yujie, acting like Lothar, the storm from 1999 (Foto: Nina Buchmann) We got a guided tour from an ETH Forest Engineer ... (Foto: Nina Buchmann) Big stem to learn about tree rings of an ash (Foto: Nina Buchmann) And at the end: a picnic lunch (Foto: Mana Gharun)
The 3rd Research Day for the public within PubliFarm has taken place at the farm of Reto Widmer in Heimiswil, 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. Read a short article of the regional external pagenewspapercall_made (in German) (9 June 2018)
Research Day in Heimiswil
A new project started today, with the great name SUPER-G. The overarching goal is the sustainable use of permanent grassland systems and the development of policies in Europe. Iris Feigenwinter, the PhD student, already started a month ago. (1 June 2018)
Interested in trait-based analyses of biodiversity in grasslands? Read our newest paper from the Jena Experiment, Roscher et al. (2018) which just was published in external pageOikoscall_made. (1 June 2018)
May
What a great day for ICOS Switzerland, in particular for the external pageatmosphere teamcall_made: external pageJungfraujochcall_made has received the ICOS Class 1 label! (31 May 2018)
Ying Liu's paper about water and salt stress on two wetland plants just got accepted in external pageScience to the Total Environment!call_made Congrats!! (26 May 2018)
The next steps followed in the RELOAD project during the last weeks: installing and setting up the shelters, burying the soil sensors, connecting everything to the data acquisition system: real team work. (April and May 2018)
RELOAD in spring 2018
We warmly welcome Kritika Grover, 2nd year Chemical Engineering student at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, who joined our group for an internship of 2 months. (15 May 2018)
A new paper on Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence is strongly correlated with terrestrial photosynthesis for a wide variety of biomes: First global analysis based on OCO-2 and flux tower observations which has been published in external pageGlobal Change Biologycall_made with contributions from Carmen Emmel. (7 May 2018)
For the period 2018-2021, Nicole Staubli-Vieli has been elected to contribute in the Personnel Commission of ETH Zurich.
A warm welcome to Iris Feigenwinter, the new PhD student in the SUPER-G project which starts in June. Iris will work on greenhouse gas exchange in permanent grasslands and be responsible for the N2O mitigation experiment initiated within Models4Pastures at Chamau. (1 May 2018)
April
Preparations for this year´s field season within the RELOAD project commenced: the pea and barley plants are still pretty small. With the current weather, we expect them to grow fast, ready for leaf and stand measurements. (20 April 2018)
And another successful outreach event within the InnoFarm project - this time as a "Flurbegehung" in the Niederamt, also in the canton of Solothurn. Even the Swiss radio SRF 4 was there to report about our plans: external pageListencall_made how excited they were, particularly about the drone flights. (19 April 2018)
"Was essen wir morgen - Das Welternährungssystem" (What do we eat tomorrow - The world food system") was the topic of today´s afternoon talk by Nina Buchmann in the external pageSenioren-Kolleg Liechtensteincall_made in Mauren. Some more info in an interview on external page1FL.LIcall_made, the Liechtenstein TV station (starting 06:30 min). (19 April 2018)
LERNfeld introduces teachers to scientific advances around the topics agriculture and climate change, biodiversity and sustainable management. Ten teachers were present at the latest event, hopefully more to come in external pageSeptembercall_made, when this event is repeated. (13 April 2018)
Nina Buchmann spent a day at external pageJRCcall_made in Ispra to discuss a new PhD program to be established between the Joint Research Center and European universities, including ETH. Discussions with the external pagesoils groupcall_made focussed on greenhouse gas emissions. More to come. (13 April 2018)
Many group members joined the external pageEGU General Assembly 2018call_made in Vienna. Carmen Emmel, Werner Eugster, Mana Gharun, and Regine Maier gave talks or presented their posters and got feedback to their science. (9 to 13 April 2018)
What to measure, where, when, and how do we measure it best? And why did we want to do this in the first place? These questions and more were discussed during a project meeting of the RELOAD project. Three PhD students are now involved. (9 April 2018)
The last meeting of the external pageCSPRcall_made, the Committee on Scientific Planning and Review of external pageICSUcall_made, the International Council for Science, took place in Paris 5 and 6 April 2018. Nina Buchmann joined in lots of discussions and a look forward, since ICSU external pagemergescall_made with its sister-council, the external pageISSCcall_made in July this year ...
Outreach to farmers engaged in our project LERNfeld. Sabina Keller introduced the learning activities on extreme events. This is the 4th year of LERNfeld and more than 50 school classes implemented one of the 17 learning activities at a farm in Switzerland. (5 April 2018)
15 years of the Grassland Sciences group, as of 1 April 2018 (no joke....). Lots of fun with former and current group members as well as partners, new insights and scientific achievements, but also a great deal of efforts and energy over the last 15 years.
Here some amazing numbers:
- 110 persons worked in our group since 2003
- 43 PhD students finished successfully since 2003
- 35 Bachelor & Master students finished successfully since 2003
- 18 apprentices were trained since 2005
- 133 courses were taught since 2010
- 3989 students were enrolled in these courses since 2010
- About 70 projects have been carried out since 2003
- Almost 550 papers were published by our group since 2003
A big THANK YOU to all who contributed. I enjoyed it and still do!! (1 April 2018)
15 years of Grassland Sciences
Evidence- and science-based agriculture: this is what this short article in the DownloadNZZ am Sonntag (PDF, 411 KB)vertical_align_bottom reports about and for which Nina Buchmann was asked for some feedback. Thhis report was triggered by a external pageNaturecall_made article on a large study in China.
March
A crop is not a crop. In a new paper (external pageAdams et al. 2018call_made in New Phytologist), we show that WUE was tightly coupled to leaf Narea for agricultural legumes and nonlegume dicots, but not for cereal crops.Thus, breeding efforts in legumes can reduce water needs. (March 2018)
A new paper on growth trends in beech and fir over the last 100 years published in external pageScience of the Total Environmentcall_made with contributions from Volodymyr Trotsiuk. (30 March 2018)
Welcome to Esther Ravelhofer who will help us with administration during the time when Nicole enjoys Japan. (28 March 2018)
Group members of the InnoFarm project participated in a "Flurbegehung" in the Wasseramt and informed the farmers how we would like to collaborate with them. Read what the Newsletter of the "external pageSolothurner Bauernverbandcall_made" wrote about it. (22 March 2018)
Lots of discussions during this year's Annual RINGO meeting which took place in Antwerp, Belgium. (20 to 22 March 2018)
"Will you contribute to our InnoFarm project?", was the question we asked the farmers present at the 101th General Assembly of the Landwirtschaftlicher Verein Niederamt. external pageRead here what they saidcall_made. (15 March 2018)
A warm welcome to Andreas Riedl, the new PhD student in the IFDewS project. Together with Yafei Li, he will test relevance of dew for grasslands. (15 March 2018)
Great idea, Valentin! A wine tasting event with our certified winemaker. The choice was white wines from Switzerland. (8 March 2018)
Wine tasting
Synthesis of ecosystem CO2, N2O, and CH4 fluxes from 14 managed grassland sites, including Chamau, shows that athough grassland management led to increased N2O and CH4 emissions, the CO2 sink strength was generally the most dominant component of the annual GHG budget. Read the full story in Hörtnagl et al. (2018) published in external pageGlobal Change Biologycall_made. (8 March 2018)
Do you love your data? We certainly do, as Nina Buchmann confessed when asked by the ETH library. Read the newest Explora story about We love data. Why data managment matters and decide what to do with your own data! And check out where our data are archived for open access and how we deal with data management in general in our group. (3 March 2018)
Great new report from Food Matters on "external pageIs Climate Change a Risk to Global Grazing Lands?call_made", coauthored by Anna Gilgen, within the DEVIL project. (2 March 2018)
Congrats!! This year's external pagePhil.Alp Awardcall_made for the best Master's thesis went to Markus Staudinger, one of the newest members of our group. His thesis was about browsing damage of Alnus viridis by livestock. (2 March 2018)
February
Great news: external pageAgricultural and Forest Sciencescall_made at ETH Zurich rank 11 globally and rank 5 in Europe, according to the newest external pageQS World University Rankingscall_made. external pageEnvironmental Sciencescall_made even rank 6 globally and 2 in Europe. A big thank you to all who contributed!! (28 February 2018)
We warmly welcome Regine Maier who will work on her PhD the next three years and will work within the project InnoFarm (28 February 2018).
We warmly welcome Markus Staudinger who will work as a technician the next two years in the Grassland Sciences Group. He will work within the project InnoFarm (28 February 2018).
Ethics in Science, an ever-lasting and widely discussed topic. Even the external pageWorld Economic Forum Young Scientist communitycall_made dealt with this issue and published a external pageCode of Ethicscall_made for researchers. Check out our course on Responsible Conduct in Science, offered for Master's and PhD students this spring semester to learn more about the general topic. (28 February 2018)
Results of our joint project with Prof. Robert Finger ValueGrass have been shared with the Swiss Farmers' Association. A lively discussion pointed to interesting new directions. (7 February 2018)
Successful start: The kick-off meeting of our joint project Forest Growth attracted 27 participants from the external pageSwiss Forest Labcall_made and was able to clarify many open questions on data availability and data access as well as next steps forward. (6 February 2018)
We warmly welcome Marvin Sarbach who joined our Grassland Sciences Group as an apprentice (5 February 2018).
We have a new gadget in the group: a 360° camera (well, actually two....). See the latest external pageviewscall_made from our Davos tower, featuring Paul Linwood. Move the mouse and you will get the full experience. (2 February 2018)
January
The AAA 2017 has been submitted: we taught 520 hours for more than 560 students and gave almost 490 grades in 2017. 35 papers were published and almost 40 posters and talks given during workshops, conferences and outreach events. Wow! (30 January 2018)
Nina Buchmann was invited to give a talk at the external pageGeoEnvironSeminarcall_made at the Center of Applied Sciences, University of Tübingen, on "The Swiss FluxNet: Greenhouse gas fluxes, C sequestration and N2O mitigation options from arable and grassland sites". (26 January 2018)
It has finally started: the ETH Climate Programme for sustainable catering. With the help of former Grassland Sciences member Dr. Dörte Bachmann, a concept for sustainable solutions in regard to food on campus has been developed together with the World Food System Center and ETH Sustainability. The aim is to reduce the CO2-eq emissions by 10% within the next three years! (17 January 2018)
And another paper coming out in Nature Ecology & Evolution, available online: together with many colleagues, Neringa Mannerheim and Nina Buchmann contributed to a study on the reproducibility in ecology by external pageMilcu et al. (2018)call_made. (15 January 2018)
Finally, our newest synthesis paper of the Jena Experiment has been published. In external pageMeyer et al. (2018call_made) we can show that biodiversity–multifunctionality relationships strongly depend on the identity and the number of measured functions. (8 January 2018)
We warmly welcome Volodymyr Trotsiuk who joined our Grassland Sciences Group as a Postdoctoral researcher in a project on data assimilation, together with the external pageSwiss Forest Labcall_made (8 January 2018).
Open data access, an issue we pursue in our group since long. Last year, our flux data from the Swiss FluxNet sites were downloaded 1853 times, up from 1062 times in 2016. This means we had about 154 downloads per month in 2017, since the external pageFluxnet2015call_made dataset has been made available!! (4 January 2018)
Have a happy and healthy 2018!