With the MULTIBEF project, we aim at taking a holistic view to the study of B-EF relationships, and to investigate climate-change effects on complex B-EF relationships. To this end, we will take advantage of particular freshwater ecosystems tightly linked to forests: water-filled tree holes!
One of the most important questions of climate change impact research today is how glaciers are responding to global warming. ERC-funded, RAVEN aims to determine the role that debris-covered glaciers play in the water cycle of High Mountain Asia and better incorporate processes unique to debris-cove
The chemistry of soil solution and the soil water availability for plants have been monitored since 1997 in seven forest plots in Switzerland. This project, linked to the Swiss Long-term Forest Ecosystem Research project (LWF), aims to assess the soil response to atmospheric pollution (acidifying substances and nitrogen) and to climate change.
International conventions and resolutions on biological diversity, sustainable forest management and climate change have led in recent decades to an increasing interest in having reference values from forests undisturbed by man. An outstanding example of such an undisturbed forest is the primeval forest of Uholka-Shyrokyi Luh within the Carpathian Biosphere Reserve (Ukraine).
As the climate continues to change, Switzerland edges closer to a future in which extreme drought in the Alps is increasingly likely – and could push water and ecological systems to their limits. The EMERGE project studies past extreme droughts in mountain regions to help us better understand, and prepare for, potential impacts in the future.
In this project we evaluate the effects of multiple combined perturbations on soil biodiversity and functioning. We evaluate perturbations related with climate change (drought and heat wave) and grassland management (fertiliser addition, pesticides, trampling, grazing effects, etc.). We hypothesise that combined perturbations will have synergistic effects with cascading negative effects on soil fauna and microbial communities biodiversity and functionality.
Glacier mass change has crucial impacts on hydrology, sea level rise, and climate change. Geodetic and glaciological mass balance observations so far have insufficient resolution to capture processes occurring on small spatial and/or short temporal scales. However, a permanent Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) station adjacent to Hintereisferner (HEF, Ötztal Alps, Austria) provides daily Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), which allow closing spatiotemporal gaps in established glacier monitoring methods. An uncertainty assessment showed that smaller-scale processes, such as snow deposition and redistribution with a vertical spatial scale >0.10 m can be investigated with the TLS setup at HEF
As a drought-sensitive species, European beech is thought to be particularly vulnerable to climate change (Leuschner, 2020) and increasing temperatures and rain-free days in Switzerland and Europe. The drought in 2018 has led to significant dieback in Switzerland (Frei et al., 2022) and models estimate large reductions in population growth rate in the coming decades in Europe (Martinez del Castillo et al., 2022). However, there is evidence that some beech individuals or populations may be more drought tolerant (Kurath et al., 2024). Characterizing the spatial distribution of genomic variation underlying beech resistance to drier and hotter climates will be key to determine where and under what conditions beech forests will persist in Europe.
Soils are not only the basis for the production of food and other raw materials, they also store and filter water, store carbon and harbour an overwhelming biodiversity. This multifunctionality emerges from complex interactions of small scale biological, physical and chemical processes. In this presentation we discuss how such processes can be represented in a systemic soil model that allows to predict the impact of soil management and climate change on soil functions and their dynamics at the scale of landscapes.
