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.

Rare earth elements in soil and in soil-grown plants

Abstract: Concentrations of the rare earth elements (REEs) La, Ce, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Yb and Lu were determined in leaves of 6 plant species (Norway spruce, silver fir, maple, ivy, blackberry, and wood fern), and in pertinent soils and soil extracts, also taken from the same site. The distribution of the individual REEs in plants showed little or no agreement with that in the soil or the soil extracts. Ce had a negative anomaly with respect to the soil in all plants. The REE distribution patterns of fir and spruce were almost identical, but differed profoundly from that of the other species. In most cases, concentration ratios between species were a smooth function of the atomic number of the REE. Very similar results were obtained at 2 additional sites.

Ozone — A Risk Factor for Trees and Forests in Europe?

Abstract: Tropospheric ozone (O3) may adversely affect tree growth, with critical levels for O3 being exceeded in many parts of Europe. However, unequivocal evidence for O3-induced foliar injury on woody species under field conditions has only been found in a few places. Visible O3 injury appears to occur mainly in the Mediterranean Basin, which is also the area where the least amount of information is available on O3 exposure as well as the sensitivity of individual species. Overall, the quantitative risk assessment of O3 impacts on mature trees and forests is vague at the European scale, as most knowledge is derived from controlled O3 fumigations of young trees, grown in isolation in exposure chambers. Research suggests that risks exist, but these need to be validated for stand conditions. O3-induced changes in resource allocation rather than productivity appear to be crucial as they affect competitiveness and predisposition to parasite attack and may eventually lead to the loss of genetic diversity. ‘Free-air’ O3 fumigations in forest canopies may reveal processes that are susceptible to O3 stress under field conditions and provide a scientific basis towards quantitative risk assessment and realistic definitions of critical levels for O3 in forest ecosystems.

A continental-scale tool for acoustic identification of European bats

Abstract: Summary 1. Acoustic methods are used increasingly to survey and monitor bat populations. However, the use of acoustic methods at continental scales can be hampered by the lack of standardized and objective methods to identify all species recorded. This makes comparable continent-wide monitoring difficult, impeding progress towards developing biodiversity indicators, transboundary conservation programmes and monitoring species distribution changes. 2. Here we developed a continental-scale classifier for acoustic identification of bats, which can be used throughout Europe to ensure objective, consistent and comparable species identifications. We selected 1350 full-spectrum reference calls from a set of 15 858 calls of 34 European species, from EchoBank, a global echolocation call library. We assessed 24 call parameters to evaluate how well they distinguish between species and used the 12 most useful to train a hierarchy of ensembles of artificial neural networks to distinguish the echolocation calls of these bat species. 3. Calls are first classified to one of five call-type groups, with a median accuracy of 97·6%. The median species-level classification accuracy is 83·7%, providing robust classification for most European species, and an estimate of classification error for each species. 4. These classifiers were packaged into an online tool, iBatsID, which is freely available, enabling anyone to classify European calls in an objective and consistent way, allowing standardized acoustic identification across the continent. 5. Synthesis and applications. iBatsID is the first freely available and easily accessible continental- scale bat call classifier, providing the basis for standardized, continental acoustic bat monitoring in Europe. This method can provide key information to managers and conservation planners on distribution changes and changes in bat species activity through time.