Greenhouse gas fluxes in forests and agroecosystems
Biosphere–Atmosphere Exchange Processes
My main interest is the quantification of greenhouse gas fluxes of CO2, CH4 and N2O and the surface energy fluxes of diverse land surface types. Both components – greenhouse gases and energy fluxes – may feed back to climate on local, regional and global scales, and hence the quantitiative understanding of these fluxes and of the processes governing these fluxes is important. Of special interests are agroecosystems, forests, grasslands, and tundra. Additional interests are fluxes from aquatic ecosystems, namely from lakes in Switzerland and the Arctic, where I have a close collaboration with colleagues from EAWAG in Switzerland and Toolik Lake LTER in Alaska. A special topic is my fog research where I am mostly interested in interactions of fog and ecosystems affected by fog. Besides hydrological aspects the nutrient and pollutant inputs to such ecosystems, particularly at the Lägeren mixed forest site in Switzerland and tropical montane cloud forests (TMCF) in Central America are of great interest. I am also involved in using stable isotopes for tracing and understanding fluxes of water and carbon in ecosystems.
Research topics
Methane fluxes
CO2 exchange
Climate feedbacks from land-use changes
Mountain ecosystems
Interdisciplinary
Link to geographical aspects of scales (ecosystem scale, regional scale)
Agronomy (plant production and productivity, emissions from animals)
Micrometeorology and ecosystem sciences
Involvement in Arctic system science research
Limnological effluxes of climate-relevant trace gases
