2021

For a quiz at our group's Christmas event, Ankit Shekhar looked at the group's publications since 2003. He found that by end of November 2021, we had published a total of 754 papers, books and book chapters. Ankit also analyzed the publications for the most frequently used words. Check out the word cloud below to find out about our research focus in the past 18 years. (7 December 2021)

Nina Buchmann was invited to give a talk to the external pageInstituto Interuniversitario de Investigación del Sistema Tierra en Andalucíacall_made, University of Granada. Results from the Swiss FluxNet were the topic of her talk "Biosphere-atmosphere exchange and responses to long- and short-term environmental changes: results from the Swiss FluxNet". Thanks for listening and watching! (4 December 2021)

A field visit to one of the Spanish sites of external pagePenelope Ortizcall_made, University of Granada, starts the scientific discussions of Nina Buchmann, during her sabbatical in southern Spain: two eddy covariance towers within olive trees, all watered and fertilized. Penelope and her colleageus study the question what effect the understory vegetation has on CO₂ and H₂O vapor fluxes in olive plantations. (18 November 2021)

Every year around this time, fog is becoming a topic for the media. Our fog expert Werner Eugster was interviewed by the Coopzeitung, Switzerland's largest weekly newspaper, and explained why he is fascinated by fog. Among other things, he also mentioned our research site Lägeren (located in the area with most fog in Switerland). Read more in the article in the external pagefull newspapercall_made. (16 November 2021)

And here starts the second part of the sabbatical of Nina Buchmann, at Universidad de Granada with external pageAndy Kowalskicall_made and external pagePenelope Ortizcall_made. (15 November 2021)

What a change of scenery: Stefan Osterwalder and Markus Staudinger installed two newly built eddy covariance systems to study Hg⁰ fluxes in a natural and forested peatland in Sweden for the Eddy Mercury 2.0 project. One system is located at the external pageICOS-SE site Degerö Stormyrcall_made and the other system at the Hälsingfors site about 3 km apart. At Degerö and Hälsingfors the Hg⁰ fluxes are measured in about 2.2 m and 20.5 m, respectively, with a resolution of 16 Hz. The new systems were developed based on a first system deployed at our grassland site Chamau in summer 2018 (external pageOsterwalder et al. 2020call_made). Within this collaborative project between the ETH Zurich and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), we aim to capture diel to seasonal variations of the Hg⁰ flux and establish a reliable "standard" methodology to open the way for rapid progress in this area of Hg research. (20-27 October 2021)

The first part of the sabbatical of Nina Buchmann comes to an end, but a great Swedish tradition at CEC resumes: fika in the morning. After 1.5 years of homeoffice, the colleagues are super happy! (29 October 2021)

Exciting experience for the RELOAD doctoral students Emily Oliveira, Qing Sun (now Dr. Sun) and Yujie Liu. The three of them enjoyed an afternoon in the film studio to shoot the second part of the footage for the RELOAD project video. Being in the spotlight (quite literally) was a new experience for all of them, but it was also a lot of fun. Thanks to the perfect organization of the WFSC team, all went very well and we are looking forward to seeing the final product in due time. (20 October 2021)

A recent article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung addressed the value of biodiversity in grassland. The article entitled "Biodiversität aus Bauernhand" (farmer-made biodiversity) also features Sergei Schaub's research on the positive relationship between plant diversity and yield in grassland published in external pageNature Communicationscall_made. (16 October 2021)

Valentin Klaus was invited to give a keynote at the 2. Hungarian Urban Ecological Conference in Győr, Hungary. Valentin was invited by the meeting organizer external pagePéter Batárycall_made to contribute to the conference (held in Hungarian, except for Valentin's talk). The talk dealt with "Options and limitations of nature conservation in cities". So good to see all the highly motivated colleagues doing urban ecological research in Hungary! (14 October 2021)

The second talk in Lund: Nina Buchmann presents the work of her team to the external pageDepartment of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Sciencecall_made and talks about „The Swiss FluxNet: Greenhouse gas fluxes, carbon budgets, extreme events, and the whole lot” (14 October 2021)

Field visit to one of the ICOS-SE sites, external pageHyltemossacall_made. ICOS-CH (Nina Buchmann) visits ICOS-SE ;-)  (12 October 2021)

Nina Buchmann gave a talk to the external pageCECcall_made, the Centre for Environmental and Climate Science, at Lund University. She presented results on „Permanent grasslands: Linking land use & environment with biodiversity & ecosystem services”. This was the first talk in a external pageseminar seriescall_made to the CEC. Happy to open the series!!! (6 October 2021)

Learn more about the FORMON Summer School in Davos that Mana Gharun and Werner Eugster contributed to (see our August news) in this external pagenew videocall_made produced by WSL. If you look closely, you will also find some beatiful shots of our setup in Davos. (6 October 2021)

Andreas Riedl was invited by external pageMeteoSwisscall_made to give two presentations about dew and ground radiation fog inputs to Swiss grasslands at the forecasting training. So far, dew is not represented in the forecast models COSMO and ICON. Thus, the forecasters at MeteoSwiss are interested in dew and fog formation processes to improve the numerical weather predictions. Andreas gave two similar presentations, because the forecasters at MeteoSwiss have day and night shifts and therefore they couldn’t attend the presentation at the same time. (30 September 2021)

Great recognition for the work of our guest researcher, Martin Jiskra: His article entitled “Mercury stable isotopes constrain atmospheric sources to the ocean” was published in Nature yesterday. Martin and his colleagues could show that only half of the mercury in the ocean originates from rainfall (and not almost all of it, as previously assumed). The other half originates from direct deposition of gaseous mercury. Reducing manmade mercury emissions may hence result in a faster response of mercury in the ocean, including in seafood, than long assumed. Find out more in the external pagepress releasecall_made or read the external pagefull articlecall_made. (30 September 2021)

An international team of researchers was able to show that terrestrial ecosystem functions can be described by just three key indicators: the capacity to maximize primary productivity, the efficiency of using water, and the efficiency of using carbon. Nina Buchmann is one of the co-authors of the article entitled "The three major axes of terrestrial ecosystem function" that was just published in Nature. For the study, the authors used data covering various climate zones and vegetation types and analyzed them using multiple methods. Learn more about the findings in the external pagepress releasecall_made of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena or in the external pagefull articlecall_made. (22 September 2021)

Sabbatical, this means exploring a new university, spending time on science, discussing with old and new colleagues. Nina Buchmann went up north, to Lund University, where her colleague external pageNatascha Kljuncall_made had a warm welcome for her! (6 September 2021)

The 19^th Swiss Climate Summer School entitled "Vegetation, Land Surfaces and Climate Interactions" took place at the Congressi Stefano Franscini on Monte Verità. During hands-on workshops, Werner Eugster and Mana Gharun taught the students about eddy covariance (EC) and plant-level ecophysiological measurements. Especially for this purpose, Werner and Mana set up an EC system beginning of the week and the students analyzed fluxes measured directly from the lawn. For ecophysiological measurements, students sampled different plant functional types and compared their measurements. They used porometers to learn how to measure stomatal conductance and to determine plant water relations, and the Scholander bomb for leaf water potential measurements to assess plant water stress. Students really enjoyed working outdoors in the magnificent environment on Monte Verità. (29 August-3 September 2021)

At the end of August, Mana Gharun and Werner Eugster contributed to the Summer School FORMON - Long-term Forest Monitoring organized by external pageICP Forestscall_made, the external pageSwissForestLabcall_made and external pageNFZ.forestnetcall_made in Davos. Mana and Werner took the participants on an excursion at our site in Davos. The students highly appreciated that the lectures could be combined with a physical visit to a forest site, a long-term research hotspot, and an external pageICOS Class 1 ecosystem stationcall_made. (22-28 August 2021)

Quite literally turbulent times for our grassland station at Chamau, which is part of the project SUPER-G. An event that happens about every 8-10 years took place on 20 August: a renewal of the grassland sward with tillage and reseeding ("Hobelsaat"). Last time this was done in 2012 (see external pageMerbold et al. 2014call_made) and also this time we observed high greenhouse gas emissions after tillage. About 1.5 months later, the vegetation was almost fully established, and the site looked like a grassland again. (20 August 2021)

The three RELOAD doctoral students Qing Sun, Emily Oliveira and Yujie Liu starred in a video shoot for the WFSC project video in the lab and in the field. The WFSC team and film crew shot footage for the project video that will be completed with interviews later this year. (17 August 2021)

Anna K. Gilgen joined the WFS Summer School and talked about climate change, biodiversity and food systems. The international group of 22 students from various disciplines spent a day in Eschikon to learn about ETH research in Agricultural Sciences. (16 August 2021)

A new station is born! Philip Meier, Mana Gharun and Luana Krebs installed the new sub-canopy station in Davos. The new station CH-DAS will be used the COCO project. Looking forward to the first results. (29 July 2021)

... better late than never! Last month, the one and a half month long ServiceGrass field campaign ended. The team consisting of three motivated interns and Franziska Richter made many measurements on "their" 94 grasslands in the Canton of Solothurn, including among others vegetation relevés, earthworms abundance, and biomass harvests. A big Thank You to the interns, who were always motivated - despite some unpleasant weather conditions and long working hours! (16 July 2021)

Our new infoboard is now installed at Chamau. The board informs by-passers about the research ourgroup has been doing at this grassland site since 2005, explains the basics of eddy covariance, and displays some of our research findings. A big shoutout to Susanne Burri who was responsible for this outreach effort. The infoboards for all our other sides are ready for installation, too. (5 July 2021)

We welcome Stefan Osterwalder to the group. Stefan joins us as a postdoc with his own project, Eddy Mercury 2.0. In this project, he will work on grassland-atmosphere exchange of Hg⁰ using the eddy covariance technique. (1 July 2021)

News about rETHink: at today´s townhall, all Working Streams presented their results from the analysis phase. Nina Buchmann, co-leading Working Stream 2, talked about their findings and current discussions about professorships. (29 June 2021)

Andreas Riedl presented his work in the IFDewS project at the 34th Conference on Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. His presentation entitled "Novel High Accuracy Weighing Micro-Lysimeter System for Long-Term Measurements of Non-Rainfall Water Inputs to a Grassland” was considered of very high quality in all categories - scientific quality, aesthetic quality, and presenter demeanor - and won second place in the student presentation award for oral presentations. Congratulations, Andreas! Check out the external pageabstractcall_made, if you are interested. (21 June 2021)

The FEVER fieldwork got a new legendary (based on Ankit's assessment) tool added to its arsenal – the 15 m high telescopic sickle. Cutting branches from a 13 m high canopy has never been this easy, but some training is needed before one masters this skill.
Check out Ankit's performance in this external pagevideocall_made. (18 June 2021)

Welcome to Serena Dorner (University of Lund, Sweden) who joined us as external pageIAESTEcall_made exchange student for the next four months. We hope you enjoy your time in our team. (15 June 2021)

Safety first! Our technicians and the FEVER and COCO doctoral students took a one-day course to ensure climbing the towers at Lägeren and Davos remains safe for everyone. The tailored training in Winterthur focused on the personal protection equipment against falls ("Persönliche Schutz Ausrüstung gegen Absturz", PSAgA). The GL climbers learned and refreshed their knowledge about the PSAgA material, received specialized knowledge and practical exercises for people working in fall-risk areas, and performed a rescue of a climber. Now everybody has the official approval to climb the towers and collect exciting data. (14 June 2021)

Valentin Klaus gave a public open-air talk at the external pageBotanical Garden of the University of Berncall_made. His talk entitled "Accuracy vs. wild growth - How do residents want their city's green spaces to be?" drew on Valentin's research on urban ecology. (10 June 2021)

„Responses of Swiss forests to long- and short-term environmental changes” was the title of the keynote, Nina Buchmann delivered at the external page9^th Scientific Conference of ICP Forestscall_made “Forest Monitoring to assess Forest Functioning under Air Pollution and Climate Change”. (8 June 2021)

Congratulations to Julian Rogger who carried out his Master thesis with us: he received the Willi-Studer Award of Agricultural Sciences for the best graduation of his cohort. (3 June 2021)

Welcome to Luana Krebs who started today in our group today. Luana will do her doctoral thesis within the COCO project, together with Liliana. We are looking forward to working with you and have a good start! (1 June 2021)

After nine years in the departmental leadership, five years as vice-chair and four years as chair, Nina Buchmann chaired her last PK and DK, i.e. the D-USYS Professors´Conference and Department´s Conference. (21 May 2021)

What would we do without student helpers? Almost nothing! For the ServiceGrass projects they are vital - and as this year’s May weather is particularly muddy and harsh. Project PI Valentin Klaus and doctoral student Franzi Richter therefore say a big THANK YOU to all helpers fighting the rain for data and scientific evidence! (19 May 2021)

Congratulations, Dr. Bruggisser! Moritz Bruggisser successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled "lmproving Forest Mensurations with High Resolution Point Clouds" at TU Wien. Since April this year, Moritz is applying his knowledge in the EcoDrive project. We're very happy that Moritz can do so as a full-fledged postdoc now. (18 May 2021)

While writing a proposal, we did some bookkeeping on our IsoLab measurements. The results are really impressive. We got our two isotope ratio mass spectrometers (IRMS) in early 2004 and ran the first actual measurements in July 2004. Since then, our two IRMS, Burns and Convertino, have delivered a wealth of data for 30 projects, 35 doctoral theses within our group (and probably some more in other groups), and more than 130 peer-reviewed papers. In total, our former (Karin Grassow-Sörgel) and current (Annika Ackermann and Roland A. Werner) IsoLab staff has run over 320'000 analyses. What an achivement! Currently, nine of our doctoral students use stable isotope analyses for their thesis - so, there's more to come. (1 May 2021)

Excursions are an important element of teaching in Agricultural Scienes. Fortunately, they are still possible, despite the Corona situation. One such excursion lead Bachelor's students to the external pageAgroVet-Strickhofcall_made site Früebüel at 1000 m a.s.l. Different aspects of agricultural research were presented, from animal sciences to micrometeorology. Iris Feigenwinter presented the Grassland group’s measurements and current research at the eddy covariance tower. Luckily it was a warm and sunny day, a welcome change to the usual home office! (23 April 2021)

Science for Policy? Climate change needs to be stopped, but how to transmit the urgency to policy-makers? What is the duty of scientists studying climate change? Should we or even must we voice our concern? Over 100 scientists from Swiss universities and research institutions have issued a external pagestatementcall_made in support of the CO₂ act. Among those signed, also Nina Buchmann. (22 April 2021)

It is Earth Day today! ETH Global hosted an online event with external pageAron Cramer, CEO of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR)call_made, and Nina Buchmann to discuss the state of our planet and the actions we need to take in order to restore it. If you missed the live event, it was recorded. (22 April 2021)

Three members of the Grassland Sciences group (and some former members) appear on the external pagenewest listcall_made of the most downloaded articles in Basic and Applied Ecology. Mana Gharun is a co-author on the most downloaded article which studied the external pageimpacts of the 2018 drought on forests in Central Europecall_made. Also the next paper on the list has someone from our group on the author list: Nina Buchmann co-authered the paper from the Jena Experiment looking at external pagebiodiversity effects on ecosystem functioningcall_made. Valentin Klaus even made it on the list twice. His papers on external pageurban ecological restorationcall_made and external pageacceptance of near-natural greenspace managementcall_made are both among the most downloaded in the last three months. (21 April 2021)

A warm welcome to Liliana Scapucci and Moritz Bruggisser who are starting in our group today. Liliana will do her doctoral thesis within the COCO project, and Moritz is our new postdoc in the EcoDrive project. We are looking forward to working with you and have a good start! (1 April 2021)

The annual conference of the external pageSwiss Society for Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology (SGAcall_made) took place online this time. One of the keynotes was delivered by Nina Buchmann, addressing the topic "external pageLandwirtschaft: Treiberin und Getriebene vom Klimawandel. Was tun?call_made". Also Sergei Schaub presented one of his latest studies. (18 March 2021)

The ecological restoration and rehabilitation of urban greenspace can benefit people and nature: based on two new papers (external pageLampinen et al. 2021call_made; external pageKlaus & Kiehl 2021call_made), Valentin Klaus presented his work on urban ecology in the Plant Ecology Seminar at the University of Bern. Thanks for lively discussions! (10 March 2021)

"Schwitzen Wiesen und Wälder so wie wir?" (Do meadows and forests sweat like us?), was the topic of a talk at the external pageKinder-Universität Zürichcall_made given by Nina Buchmann. Once postponed in 2020, it now took place in zoom: a 30 min talk followed by about 20 min discussion with about 80 children of grades 3 to 6 (primary school). Great questions, addressing different plant types, ecosystems, and even poop..... An interview by a Kinderreporter followed. Quite an experience, enjoyable and eye-opening! Thanks for the invitation! Find the recording external pageherecall_made. (19 March 2021)

Spring is coming and the cows are hungry for fresh grass. Time to start setting up grazing exclosure cages on the pastures for the ServiceGrass project. Thanks to strong helpers, the first cages are standing and look more or less robust. Hopefully they will withstand curious cows! (5 March 2021)

The project DiversGrass makes the start to the series «Forschung kompakt» with examples of research from the IAS in the Swiss agricultural newspaper die grüne. The short article summarizes the main findings of DiversGrass and Nina Buchmann and Robert Finger comment on the interdisciplinary research of our institute. The article is illustrated with a nice photo taken by Valentin Klaus. Read the full contribution external pageherecall_made (in German only). (4 March 2021)

Philip Meier, Ankit Shekhar and Mana Gharun had to do some maintenance at our field site in Davos for ICOS-CH and the FEVER project. The three were awarded with nice winter weather and a beatiful scenery. Have a look at how spectacular field work in winter can be! (26 February 2021)

Our Annual Academic Achievements report 2020 has been submitted. Here some impressive numbers:

• 672 students taught in 2020,
• 516 grades given in 2020,
• 6 Bachelor's and Master's students finished in 2020,
• 13 active doctoral students (by the end of the year),
• 2 doctoral students finished in 2020,
• a large number of publications ... 69 !!! This is all time record!
  
• Out of the 62 journal articles, 42 are open access, thus 68%. This is more than double of what we had last year!!
• About one third, 20 papers have been written in large consortia.
  

Thanks a lot: great team, great fun, great success. (26 January 2021)

As each year ... actually no. This year, our IsoEcology course took a very different road. We started onsite on Friday, but gradually moved the course online during the following week. Most of the experiments were done on Monday afternoon, adhering to our "Schutzkonzept" (safety concept), only a small number of students came in, coached by members of our and neighboring groups, some worked with existing data. The result? Great talks on Friday afternoon. So, yes, "we can do it (online)" (free after Bob, the Builder). (15 to 22 January 2021)

A warm welcome to Bruno Pfister who will support our team in the field and in the workshop for the next two years! (4 January 2021)

Happy New Year! The Grassland Sciences group wishes you all the best for the year ahead! Stay healthy! We look forward to continuing our current research projects, starting new projects and campaigns, working with engaged students, and interacting with an interested public. If you are interested what we did last year, check here. And most of all, we hope to meet many of you in person this year. (1 January 2021)