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.

Testate Amoebae and Nutrient Cycling with Particular Reference to Soils

Abstract: We asked the following question: Is the lack of attention given to testate amoebae, and other protists, in studies of nutrient cycling justified by their relative unimportance or are we ignoring key players in nutrient cycling and other ecological processes? We review various aspects of the ecology of testates relevant to their role in nutrient cycling. These include their food sources, their population sizes and production ecology, the rate of test breakdown (and hence recycling of material from testates to other organisms) and non-feeding interactions with other organisms (e.g., mychorrhizae). Much of the relevant published literature dates from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, presumably due to the interest in production ecology and other aspects of ecosystem ecology at this time. There was a reduction in relevant research during the 1980s and 1990s, but there has recently been signs of renewed interest in this area. In addition to reviewing the past literature we suggest new speculations about the r...

Prediction of sediment transport in step‐pool channels

Abstract: [1] In mountainous drainage networks, sediment mobilized on hillslopes must first pass through steep streams before reaching lower-gradient channels. The bed of steep channels is typically composed of large, relatively immobile boulders and finer, more mobile gravel. Most sediment transport equations overpredict sediment flux in steep streams by several orders of magnitude because they do not account for the stress borne by immobile grains and the limited availability of the more mobile sediment. We previously developed and tested (in flume experiments) a sediment transport equation that accounts for these two effects. Here we modify the Parker (1990) bed load equation to include the resistance borne by steps and selective transport of the relatively mobile sediment using a range of hiding functions. We test a number of resistance equations and hiding functions, combined with our modified and the original Parker equations, against measured flow and sediment transport in three steep channels. Our modified sediment transport equation generally predicts the transported sediment volumes to within an order of magnitude of the measured values, whereas the unmodified equations do not. The most accurate sediment flux predictions were obtained from using our modified equation, combined with a hiding function that calculates highly selective transport of the relatively mobile sediment. Furthermore, this hiding function has a critical Shields stress that is similar to those reported for lower gradient channels. The effects of the immobile steps on flow and sediment transport are not adequately captured by simply increasing the critical Shields stress to values reported in steep streams.