News
Dr. Nemiah Ladd awarded SNSF Eccellenza Professorial Fellowship
Dr. Ladd will join the Environmental Sciences Department, and work in partial collaboration with the PPE group. Her project will use stable isotopes in lipid biomarkers and other methods to examine changes in algal ecology and productivity…
Alessandro Gregori joins PPE group as a lab technician
Alessandro Gregori has recently joined the PPE group as a lab technician in the stable isotope lab. He comes to us after recently working at WSL, and will assist with lab operations for the next six months approximately.
A new paper that appeared in PNAS this month reveals strong effects of soil water availability on carbon transport in mature trees
Dry soils can significantly reduce the transport of carbon assimilates from the canopy to roots in trees. A new publication in PNAS describes the result of a large-scale 13C-labelling experiment with mature Scotts pine trees at the…
Data from Melanie Egli’s master's thesis published in RCMS
In her master's thesis, Melanie Egli tested and refined methods for extracting sugars from leaves and phloem for oxygen isotope analysis. This work has now been published in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry (RCMS) and even made in…Camilo Chiang and Günter Hoch publish two new papers on light responses in plants
Camilo recently defended his PhD in the PPE group, and has now published two new papers on his research. The first paper investigated the effects of different light wavelength combinations in phytotrons (indoor growth chambers) on plant…
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Block Course in Plant Biology 2020
On Monday we started with the Block Course in Plant Biology. We were able to welcome 18 undergraduate students in our labs that we will teach the basic principles of physiological plant ecology and stable isotope ecology over the next three…
Congratulations to Camilo Chiang on his PhD defense
Camilo Chiang successfully defended his PhD on September 10th. We congratulate him on his comprehensive thesis on the effects of light quality and climate fluctuations on plant performance in indoor cultures, which has already resulted in…
Anupa Alice Mathew joins the PPE group as a new PhD student
We are pleased to welcome Anupa Alice Mathew to the PPE group. Anupa recently arrived in Basel from the University of Götingen in Germany, where she completed her MSc degree on Crop protection. Anupa will work on the project BIOFAM to study…
PPE research at Hölstein featured on SRF 1 radio series
Research at the Swiss Canopy Crane II site at Hölstein was recently discussed on the SRF 1 summer radio series ‘Leidenschaft Holz’ (‘Passion for Wood’). Listen to the broadcast at the link below (in german).
First impact assessment of the 2018 drought on European forests now published in Basic and Applied Ecology
In June 2018 researchers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland gathered in Basel to assemble a first overview on the impact of the 2018 drought on European forests. The results of this workshop have now been published in an opinion paper in…PPE Group Featured in Neue Zürcher Zeitung
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung recently published a story on the increasing impact that the combination of high temperature and drought are having on our regions forests. Work by the PPE Group at Hoelstein was discussed in the article, with…New paper in New Phytologist on tree recovery from drought
Matthias Arend and colleagues from Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences SLU published a letter in New Phytologist that sheds new light on the recovery of trees from drought. They summarize in…
Rachel Patthey passes her master's exam
Congratulations to Rachel for passing her master's exam in Plant Sciences on May 15! Good luck, we all hope you enjoyed your social distance celebration, and wish that we could have joined you!
Patrícia dos Santos and Jurriaan de Vos receive new funding for fieldwork in the Canary Islands
Funding comes from the Stiftung zur Förderung der Pflanzenkenntnis, and will support fieldwork on the islands of El Hierro and Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. The project "The eco-morphological diversification of the genus Aeonium…