University of Basel

Department of
Environmental Sciences

Physiological Plant Ecology

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Raphi

Congratulations to Raphael von Büren for successfully defending his master's thesis on November 10th!

Raphael von Büren has shown that winter frost (due to missing snow cover) and different frost resistance explain the occurrence of Carex curvula and Nardus stricta in the alpine belt. He made an important step to better understand the…

sdf

SCCII jib extended to 62.5 m!

The Swiss canopy crane II is now equipped with a longer jib. We extended the original 50 m jib to 62.5 m. With the new jib we have now canopy access to 312 mature trees belonging to 10 different species. We thank Liebherr and the HeliSwiss…

PPE in the News!

Our recent publication of using stable oxygen isotope models to counter food fraud (Cueni et al, 2021, Scientific Reports) received substantial media coverage.

selinaMS

Congratulations to Selina Hugger for successfully defending her master's thesis

In her master's project, Selina applied mechanistic stable isotope models to extract physiological information from oxygen isotopes in historic plant samples from a grassland ecosystem. This allowed her to estimate the physiological…

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New paper on using stable isotopes to counter food fraud published in Scientific Reports

Florian Cueni led the study with contributions from Dan Nelson and Ansgar Kahmen, which demonstrates the use of stable oxygen isotope models to predict the origin of fruit in Europe. The false geographic declaration of agricultural products…

fgh

Team excursion to the SCCII site in Hölstein

Under wonderful weather conditions the PPE group could finally hold their long-awaited team outing to the SCCII site in Hölstein last week.

ecohydrology

A new paper in eco-hydrology appeared this week

 In the paper we report on a study where we used deuterium labeled water to assess the infiltration of a precipitation event into a temperate forest ecosystem. We found that the label water infiltrated the system rapidly. Also, the trees…

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New paper on using machine learning to model oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in precipitation published in PNAS

Dan Nelson led the study with contributions from David Basler and Ansgar Kahmen, which used a new modelling approach based on machine learning to predict monthly oxygen and hydrogen isotope values in precipitation beginning in 1950. Stable…

Horizonte

The Swiss research magazine Horizons published an article on our research at the Swiss Canopy Crane II site in Hölstein

Check out the article and nice photography here.

biochem schematic

New paper on plant lipid biosynthesis and hydrogen isotope fractionation published in New Phytologist

Nemiah Ladd led this study with contributions from Dan Nelson, Ansgar Kahmen, and others, which used artificial position specific 13C-labeled pyruvate to track metabolic exchange between cytosolic and plastidial biosynthetic pathways. The…

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Image of alpine roots wins SNF prize!

The image shows an astonishing diversity of root structures with different colours, thicknesses, root hairs  and branching patterns. This and thousands of other images were captured as part of the 'bel-alp' project that studies root…

maria_snow

New paper in Climatic Change about historic and future changes in snowmelt dates in the Alps

Maria Vorkauf, Christoph Marty, Ansgar Kahmen and Erika Hiltbrunner combined manually acquired long-term time series measurements of snow depth in the Alps with newer data from automatic measurement stations above 2000 m asl to understand…

maria_phenology

New paper in Alpine Botany about the phenology of alpine plant species

In a unique field experiment conducted in a typical alpine grassland on siliceous bedrock at 2500 m asl, Maria Vorkauf, Christian Körner, Ansgar Kahmen and Erika Hiltbrunner studied the response of alpine plant species to shifting snowmelt…

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New paper in PNAS about hydraulic collapse as the cause of drought-induced mortality in conifers

Matthias Arend, Rachel Patthey, Günter Hoch, Ansgar Kahmen, and their co-authors conducted an important study on the mechanisms of tree mortality during the unprecedented Central European summer drought in 2018. The study tracked dynamic…

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New paper on hydrogen isotopes from sedimentary plant waxes published in JGR Biogeosciences

Nemiah Ladd led this study with contributions from Dan Nelson and other co-authors, which examined the relationships between the hydrogen isotopic compositions of sedimentary plant waxes with those of rainfall. The study focused on placing…

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