News
News article in the Volksstimme: Forests will change because of drought
Last week a local primary school class visited the SCCII research site to learn more about the forest and its ecosystem. A journalist from Baselbiet accompanied the group to report on the experience. As the article in the link explains, the…
PPE Block Course Underway
The annual PPE Block Course in Plant Biology began last week. We welcome this year's class and are excited for the many opportunities for learning about stable isotope ecology and plant physiological ecology from both a theoretical and…
PPE Group Presents at GfÖ Annual Meeting
Many members of the PPE group attended the GfÖ Annual Meeting 2019, which was held from September 09 to 13, 2019 in Münster, Germany. In total the PPE group gave nine separate presentations. More details on the meeting can be found at the…
Eligio Amicabile passes his master's exam
Congratulations to Eligio for passing his master's exam in Plant Sciences on September 6!
Arthur Brêchet passes his master's exam
Congratulations to Arthur for passing his master's exam in Plant Sciences on September 5th!
Blogpost on the Herbaria Basel
Why do we keep 700’000 plants in the herbarium? Our curator and senior scientist Jurriaan de Vos published a blogpost on the history and relevance of herbaria, from a personal perspective. He explains how 400 years of plant collecting in…
2019 PPE Team Retreat - August 28-30
It has become a good tradition of our group to meet once a year for several days at the ALPFOR research station in the heart of the Swiss Alps. We used the 2019 retreat to look back at our achievements of the last year and outlined our…Article in "Le Temps" features PPE research on Swiss forest response to recent droughts
A recent article published in "Le Temps" features PPE research on the vulnerability of Swiss forests to drought events. The article highlights the important role for combinations of low rainfall and high temperature, as well as the impacts…
Livio Bätscher joins the PPE group as a new PhD student
We are pleased to welcome Livio Bätscher to the PPE group. Livio comes to our group after obtaining his MSc degree from the University of Bern. He will work with Dr Jurriaan de Vos on his recently funded SNF project PRO-Alp to explore how…Erika Hiltbrunner publishes a comment on the interpretation of foliar nitrogen isotope values in the context of a changing N cycle
PPE group research on forest sensitivity to drought featured on Telebasel
The combined effects of drought and elevated temperature during the warmest summer ever recorded in the Basel region had a large impact on the region’s forests, with widespread tree death and damage. Research in the PPE group continues to…
Snow manipulation at Furka Pass enters the 4th season
From June 12th to 15th this year's snow shoveling team (Erika, Maria, Florian, Fabian, Lawrence, and Patrick) were up on the Bidmer plateau to manipulate the snow cover. Digging 'holes' (~50 cm snow height) and piling up snow (~130 cm snow…New paper by Devesh Singh on hydraulic lift published in Plant and Soil
This work shows how a common mycorrhizal network can facilitate the transfer of hydraulically lifted water from a deep-rooted pigeon pea to shallow-rooted finger millet under drought conditions.