SNF projects by Erika Hiltbrunner and Günter Hoch receive funding

SNF

Congratulations to both Erika and Günter for each receiving funding for four year SNF projects.

 

In the project “Bel-Alp” Erika will assess the effects of winter and summer precipitation changes on alpine grasslands. In alpine grasslands shifts in precipitation regimes will not only affect the water relations of plants but will also significantly affect snow melt in the spring and thus critically influence the growing season length. This new project will capitalise on and continue an existing precipitation manipulation experiment at the alpine research station ALPFOR (<link en mercator>https://ppe.duw.unibas.ch/en/mercator/). While the first phase of this experiment has largely focussed on above-ground responses of the vegetation to precipitation changes, 80% of the biomass in alpine ecosystems is belwo-ground. Bel-Alp will thus address the more complex below-ground responses of alpine ecosystems to changes in precipitation regimes.


The aim of Günters new project is to investigate the physiology of vertical canopy structures in mature temperate trees. Although vertical gradients in canopies are well recognized, the difficult access to mature tree crowns generally prevents their investigations. The new Swiss Canopy Crane II at our species-rich temperate mixed forest in Hölstein, provides the ideal infrastructure to perform in situ measurements within the canopies of a total of ca. 260 mature trees of ten different species. With the new project, Günter and his team can now use the Swiss Canopy Crane II to conduct the first spatially and temporally highly-resolved investigations on growth, leaf gas exchange, carbon reserve dynamics and water relations along the environmental gradient in canopies of broad-leaved and conifer tree species. This explicit consideration of environmental gradients in the canopies of trees will deliver three-dimensional information of physiological processes and will help to develop more realistic dynamic tree growth models.