Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research

About: Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research is a facility organization based out in Birmensdorf, Switzerland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Climate change & Soil water. The organization has 1256 authors who have published 3222 publications receiving 161639 citations. The organization is also known as: WSL.

Towards long-term standardised carbon and greenhouse gas observations for monitoring Europe's terrestrial ecosystems: a review

Abstract: Research infrastructures play a key role in launching a new generation of integrated long-Term, geographically distributed observation programmes designed to monitor climate change, better understand its impacts on global ecosystems, and evaluate possible mitigation and adaptation strategies. The pan-European Integrated Carbon Observation System combines carbon and greenhouse gas (GHG; CO2, CH4, N2O, H2O) observations within the atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystems and oceans. High-precision measurements are obtained using standardised methodologies, are centrally processed and openly available in a traceable and verifiable fashion in combination with detailed metadata. The Integrated Carbon Observation System ecosystem station network aims to sample climate and land-cover variability across Europe. In addition to GHG flux measurements, a large set of complementary data (including management practices, vegetation and soil characteristics) is collected to support the interpretation, spatial upscaling and modelling of observed ecosystem carbon and GHG dynamics. The applied sampling design was developed and formulated in protocols by the scientific community, representing a trade-off between an ideal dataset and practical feasibility. The use of open-Access, high-quality and multi-level data products by different user communities is crucial for the Integrated Carbon Observation System in order to achieve its scientific potential and societal value. (Less)

Tree fine root Ca/Al molar ratio – Indicator of Al and acidity stress

Abstract: High soil acidity and elevated soil Al concentrations limit plant growth in many terrestrial ecosystems. Aluminium toxicity can be ameliorated by Ca. Thus, Ca/Al molar ratios in soil solution and in plant tissues have been proposed as superior indicators than Al concentration itself for evaluating the Al toxicity stress to trees (Cronan & Grigal, J Environ Qual 1995;24:209 – 226). This article presents an overview of publications since 1995 where the reduced Ca/Al ratio in fine tree roots has been used as an indicator of stress for Al and/or soil acidity. The main aim of this review was to evaluate the use and the critical threshold of the fine root Ca/Al ratio as a potential indicator for Al toxicity stress to trees in acid soils. Based on the reviewed literature, the fine root Ca/Al molar ratio was strongly negatively related to Al stress in small tree seedlings in controlled environments, whereas the response was not clear under field conditions where other environmental factors interact. Fine...

Fungal endophytes of dryas octopetala from a high arctic polar semidesert and from the swiss alps

Abstract: Endophytes were isolated from leaves, stems and roots of Dryas octopetala sampled in Switzerland and Spitsbergen. Endophyte assemblages from differ? ent sites and at different sampling times were diverse. Seventy-three species were isolated in the four sites examined and 38 had frequencies of more than 10% in at least one sample. Samples from the subalpine region were generally richer in species than those col? lected in the alpine or Arctic regions. Leaves tended to host more endophyte taxa than twigs or roots.

Monthly hydrometeorological ensemble prediction of streamflow droughts and corresponding drought indices

Abstract: . Streamflow droughts, characterized by low runoff as consequence of a drought event, affect numerous aspects of life. Economic sectors that are impacted by low streamflow are, e.g., power production, agriculture, tourism, water quality management and shipping. Those sectors could potentially benefit from forecasts of streamflow drought events, even of short events on the monthly time scales or below. Numerical hydrometeorological models have increasingly been used to forecast low streamflow and have become the focus of recent research. Here, we consider daily ensemble runoff forecasts for the river Thur, which has its source in the Swiss Alps. We focus on the evaluation of low streamflow and of the derived indices as duration, severity and magnitude, characterizing streamflow droughts up to a lead time of one month. The ECMWF VarEPS 5-member ensemble reforecast, which covers 18 yr, is used as forcing for the hydrological model PREVAH. A thorough verification reveals that, compared to probabilistic peak-flow forecasts, which show skill up to a lead time of two weeks, forecasts of streamflow droughts are skilful over the entire forecast range of one month. For forecasts at the lower end of the runoff regime, the quality of the initial state seems to be crucial to achieve a good forecast quality in the longer range. It is shown that the states used in this study to initialize forecasts satisfy this requirement. The produced forecasts of streamflow drought indices, derived from the ensemble forecasts, could be beneficially included in a decision-making process. This is valid for probabilistic forecasts of streamflow drought events falling below a daily varying threshold, based on a quantile derived from a runoff climatology. Although the forecasts have a tendency to overpredict streamflow droughts, it is shown that the relative economic value of the ensemble forecasts reaches up to 60%, in case a forecast user is able to take preventive action based on the forecast.

General destabilizing effects of eutrophication on grassland productivity at multiple spatial scales

Abstract: Eutrophication is a widespread environmental change that usually reduces the stabilizing effect of plant diversity on productivity in local communities. Whether this effect is scale dependent remains to be elucidated. Here, we determine the relationship between plant diversity and temporal stability of productivity for 243 plant communities from 42 grasslands across the globe and quantify the effect of chronic fertilization on these relationships. Unfertilized local communities with more plant species exhibit greater asynchronous dynamics among species in response to natural environmental fluctuations, resulting in greater local stability (alpha stability). Moreover, neighborhood communities that have greater spatial variation in plant species composition within sites (higher beta diversity) have greater spatial asynchrony of productivity among communities, resulting in greater stability at the larger scale (gamma stability). Importantly, fertilization consistently weakens the contribution of plant diversity to both of these stabilizing mechanisms, thus diminishing the positive effect of biodiversity on stability at differing spatial scales. Our findings suggest that preserving grassland functional stability requires conservation of plant diversity within and among ecological communities.