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.

Two centuries of masting data for European beech and Norway spruce across the European continent.

Abstract: © 2017 by the Ecological Society of America. Tree masting is one of the most intensively studied ecological processes. It affects nutrient fluxes of trees, regeneration dynamics in forests, animal population densities, and ultimately influences ecosystem services. Despite a large volume of research focused on masting, its evolutionary ecology, spatial and temporal variability, and environmental drivers are still matter of debate. Understanding the proximate and ultimate causes of masting at broad spatial and temporal scales will enable us to predict tree reproductive strategies and their response to changing environment. Here we provide broad spatial (distribution range-wide) and temporal (century) masting data for the two main masting tree species in Europe, European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) and Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) H. Karst.). We collected masting data from a total of 359 sources through an extensive literature review and from unpublished surveys. The data set has a total of 1,747 series and 18,348 yearly observations from 28 countries and covering a time span of years 1677–2016 and 1791–2016 for beech and spruce, respectively. For each record, the following information is available: identification code; species; year of observation; proxy of masting (flower, pollen, fruit, seed, dendrochronological reconstructions); statistical data type (ordinal, continuous); data value; unit of measurement (only in case of continuous data); geographical location (country, Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics NUTS-1 level, municipality, coordinates); first and last record year and related length; type of data source (field survey, peer reviewed scientific literature, gray literature, personal observation); source identification code; date when data were added to the database; comments. To provide a ready-to-use masting index we harmonized ordinal data into five classes. Furthermore, we computed an additional field where continuous series with length >4 yr where converted into a five classes ordinal index. To our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive published database on species-specific masting behavior. It is useful to study spatial and temporal patterns of masting and its proximate and ultimate causes, to refine studies based on tree-ring chronologies, to understand dynamics of animal species and pests vectored by these animals affecting human health, and it may serve as calibration–validation data for dynamic forest models.

Forestry professionals’ perceptions of climate change, impacts and adaptation strategies for forests in south-west Germany

Abstract: Forestry professionals’ perceptions of the risks and uncertainties associated with climate change were investigated in a questionnaire survey in south-west Germany The respondents were employed in forestry in either public or private forests or working for state authorities They were specifically asked about the related impacts of climate change on forest ecosystems, adaptive forest management and the potential of forestry to mitigate climate change A factor analysis of the responses revealed significant variables explaining the major part of the variance and the key variable groups were identified in a canonical analysis The majority of respondents (72 %) said they were under-informed, but most (83 %) view climate change as a reality, human-caused, and a significant risk These forestry professionals were particularly concerned about extreme hazards, water scarcity, and changes in climatic zones They generally said the potential of forestry to mitigate climate change is low, and saw few realistic measures like increased harvesting to substitute fossil fuels and energy-intensive materials for mitigation Despite the uncertainty involved, adaptation strategies like using better-adapted tree species and provenances were mainly perceived as helpful, and tools such as spatially-explicit maps with recommendations for adapted species and indices of biotic and abiotic risks as important The forestry professionals reported obtaining their information about climate change from advanced forestry training, the media, and scientific literature The findings of the study are discussed in the light of the ongoing debate on climate change in Germany and recommendations made, including periodically checking and improving forestry professionals’ knowledge about climate change

Load model for designing flexible steel barriers for debris flow mitigation

Abstract: Light-weight flexible steel net barriers catch coarse debris, but let some of the fine material and water pass through the net. They are difficult to design so that they can withstand the impact pr...

Oxygen isotope fractionations across individual leaf carbohydrates in grass and tree species.

Abstract: Almost no δ(18) O data are available for leaf carbohydrates, leaving a gap in the understanding of the δ(18) O relationship between leaf water and cellulose. We measured δ(18) O values of bulk leaf water (δ(18) OLW ) and individual leaf carbohydrates (e.g. fructose, glucose and sucrose) in grass and tree species and δ(18) O of leaf cellulose in grasses. The grasses were grown under two relative humidity (rH) conditions. Sucrose was generally (18) O-enriched compared with hexoses across all species with an apparent biosynthetic fractionation factor (ebio ) of more than 27‰ relative to δ(18) OLW , which might be explained by isotopic leaf water and sucrose synthesis gradients. δ(18) OLW and δ(18) O values of carbohydrates and cellulose in grasses were strongly related, indicating that the leaf water signal in carbohydrates was transferred to cellulose (ebio = 25.1‰). Interestingly, damping factor pex px , which reflects oxygen isotope exchange with less enriched water during cellulose synthesis, responded to rH conditions if modelled from δ(18) OLW but not if modelled directly from δ(18) O of individual carbohydrates. We conclude that δ(18) OLW is not always a good substitute for δ(18) O of synthesis water due to isotopic leaf water gradients. Thus, compound-specific δ(18) O analyses of individual carbohydrates are helpful to better constrain (post-)photosynthetic isotope fractionation processes in plants.