Publications related to Biodiversity

At what spatial scale does natural selection operate? Using multiscale frameworks to calibrate the effects of environmental factors across landscape continuums

Patterns in nature arise from processes interacting across a continuum of spatial scales, where new relationships emerge at each level of investigation. These patterns are nested features encompassing fine-scale local patterns, such as topography and geolo ...

EPFL2024

Tree diversity reduces variability in sapling survival under drought

Charlotte Grossiord, Jingjing Liang, Xiaojuan Liu

Enhancing tree diversity may be important to fostering resilience to drought-related climate extremes. So far, little attention has been given to whether tree diversity can increase the survival of trees and reduce its variability in young forest plantatio ...

Wiley2024

Mapping drivers of tropical forest loss with satellite image time series and machine learning

Devis Tuia, Gaston Jean Lenczner, Jan Pisl, Jan Dirk Wegner, Marc Conrad Russwurm, Lloyd Haydn Hughes

The rates of tropical deforestation remain high, resulting in carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, and impacts on local communities. To design effective policies to tackle this, it is necessary to know what the drivers behind deforestation are. Since drive ...

Iop Publishing Ltd2024

The microbial genomics of glacier-fed streams: adaptations to an extreme ecosystem

Massimo Bourquin

Glacier-fed streams are the cold, ultra-oligotrophic, and unstable streams that are fed by glacial meltwater. Despite these extreme conditions, they harbour a diverse and abundant microbial diversity that develops into biofilms, covering the boulders and s ...

EPFL2024

From roots to canopy: Unraveling the influence of species diversity on tree water relations under warmer and drier climates

Eugénie Isabelle Mas

The worsening of drought events with rising air temperature alters tree water relations causing severe hydraulic impairments and widespread forest mortality. Mixing tree species with contrasting hydraulic traits could reduce forest vulnerability to extreme ...

EPFL2024

Addressing chemical pollution in biodiversity research

Kristin Schirmer, Ahmed Tlili, Colette vom Berg

Climate change, biodiversity loss, and chemical pollution are planetary-scale emergencies requiring urgent mitigation actions. As these "triple crises" are deeply interlinked, they need to be tackled in an integrative manner. However, while climate change ...

WILEY2023

Genomics and conservation: Guidance from training to analyses and applications

Annie Sandrine Guillaume

Environmental change is intensifying the biodiversity crisis and threatening species across the tree of life. Conservation genomics can help inform conservation actions and slow biodiversity loss. However, more training, appropriate use of novel genomic me ...

Wiley2023

Use of an unmanned aerial-aquatic vehicle for acoustic sensing in freshwater ecosystems

Mirko Kovac, Raphael Zufferey

Freshwater ecosystems are endangered, underfunded and understudied, making new methods such as passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) essential for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of data collection. However, many challenges are still to be addressed ...

Wiley2023

Classification of Tropical Deforestation Drivers with Machine Learning and Satellite Image Time Series

Devis Tuia, Jan Pisl, Marc Conrad Russwurm, Lloyd Haydn Hughes

Tropical deforestation is a major environmental problem with severe consequences such as carbon emissions or biodiversity loss. While much research focuses on monitoring and mapping deforestation, less attention is paid to understanding the various reasons ...

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.2023

Food web structure and energy flux dynamics, but not taxonomic richness, influence microbial ecosystem functions in a Sphagnum-dominated peatland

Alexandre Buttler, Edward Mitchell, Vincent Eric Jules Jassey

Soil microbial communities are vital for multiple ecosystem processes and services. In particular, soil microbial food webs are key determinants of soil biodiversity, functioning and stability. Unclear, however, is how struc-tural features of food webs, su ...

ELSEVIER FRANCE-EDITIONS SCIENTIFIQUES MEDICALES ELSEVIER2023

Glacier-Fed Stream Biofilms Harbor Diverse Resistomes and Biosynthetic Gene Clusters

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Susheel Bhanu Busi, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud, Leïla Ezzat, Massimo Bourquin, Matteo Tolosano, Paraskevi Pramateftaki, Vincent Henri De Staercke, Tyler Joe Kohler, Michail Styllas, Stylianos Fodelianakis

Antimicrobial resistance is an omnipresent phenomenon in the anthropogenically influenced ecosystems. However, its role in shaping microbial community dynamics in pristine environments is relatively unknown. ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2023

Periodic and Aperiodic NiFe Nanomagnet/Ferrimagnet Hybrid Structures for 2D Magnon Steering and Interferometry with High Extinction Ratio

Dirk Grundler, Sho Watanabe, Andrea Mucchietto, Shixuan Shan, Elif Nur Dayi, Vinayak Shantaram Bhat

Magnons, quanta of spin waves, are known to enable information processing with low power consumption at the nanoscale. So far, however, experimentally realized half-adders, wave-logic and binary output operations were based on few µm-long spin waves and re ...

Wiley2023

Importance of hydropower reservoirs and dams in Europe to mitigate the energy crisis and to serve as a catalyst and enabler for the Green Deal

Anton Schleiss

Hydropower has a long tradition in Europe and contributed significantly during the last century to industrial development and welfare in most of the countries in Europe. The ambitious plan for an energy transition in Europe now seeks to achieve a lowcarbon ...

CRC Press/Balkema2023

Ecosystem engineering by periphyton in Alpine proglacial streams

Tom Ian Battin, Davide Mancini, Marc Aguet, Adrijan Selitaj, Matteo Roncoroni

Stream periphytons are candidate ecosystem engineers in proglacial margins. Here, we quantify the extent to which they are engineers for the case of hillslope-fed tributaries in the terrace zones of proglacial margin alluvial plains. Candidate ecosystem en ...

WILEY2023

Key factors determining the presence of Tree-related Microhabitats: A synthesis of potential factors at site, stand and tree scales, with perspectives for further research

Rita Bütler Sauvain

Tree-related microhabitats (TreMs) have been identified as key features for forest-dwelling taxa and are often employed as measures for biodiversity conservation in integrative forest management. However, managing forests to ensure an uninterrupted resourc ...

2022

Aerobiology over the Southern Ocean – implications for bacterial colonization of Antarctica

Julia Schmale

Parts of the Antarctic are experiencing dramatic ecosystem change due to rapid and record warming, which may weaken biogeographic boundaries and dispersal barriers, increasing the risks of biological invasions. In this study, we collected air samples from ...

2022

Both diversity and functional composition affect productivity and water use efficiency in experimental temperate grasslands

Charlotte Grossiord, Margaux Clara Lou Didion-Gency

Many experiments have shown that biodiversity promotes ecosystem functioning and stability and that this relationship varies with resource availability. However, we still have a poor understanding of the underlying physiological and ecological mechanisms d ...

WILEY2021

Growing maize landraces in industrialized countries: from the search for seeds to the emergence of new practices and values

Marianna Fenzi

In industrialized countries, maize cultivation is mainly associated with the use of hybrid varieties and input-intensive monocultures. Despite the homogeneity of European maize landscapes, alternative models of maize production based on landraces exist. Un ...

2022

Praxisorientierte Forschung im Bereich Wasserbau und Ökologie [Practice-oriented research in hydraulic engineering and ecology]

Giovanni De Cesare

Wasserbau und Ökologie (W&Ö) ist ein schweizweites Forschungsprogramm zu den Themen Renaturierung, Biodiversitätsförderung, Wassernutzung und Naturgefahren im Bereich von Fliessgewässern und den davon direkt beeinflussten Mündungsbereichen und Ufern der Se ...

ETH2021

The Metabolic Regimes at the Scale of an Entire Stream Network Unveiled Through Sensor Data and Machine Learning

Enrico Bertuzzo, Tom Ian Battin, Pier Luigi Segatto

Streams and rivers form dense networks that drain the terrestrial landscape and are relevant for biodiversity dynamics, ecosystem functioning, and transport and transformation of carbon. Yet, resolving in both space and time gross primary production (GPP), ...

2021