Publications related to Ecosystem collapse

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

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

Metabolism of the symbiotic jellyfish Cassiopea in a changing environment

Gaëlle Delphine Toullec

Ocean warming and other anthropogenic impacts have led to a global decline in many photosymbiotic cnidarians, most notably reef-building corals. But some species of the symbiotic and (sub-)tropical upside-down jellyfish Cassiopea are increasingly reported ...

EPFL2023

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

Industry Commons: an ecosystem approach to horizontal enablers for sustainable cross-domain industrial innovation (a positioning paper)

Dimitrios Kyritsis

This paper introduces the background, concept and definition of the Industry Commons. It initiates a discussion on the positioning of the Industry Commons Ecosystem (ICE) with respect to current research directions in advanced manufacturing and production ...

TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD2022

Foliar respiration is related to photosynthetic, growth and carbohydrate response to experimental drought and elevated temperature

Charlotte Grossiord

Short-term plant respiration (R) increases exponentially with rising temperature, but drought could reduce respiration by reducing growth and metabolism. Acclimation may alter these responses. We examined if species with different drought responses would d ...

WILEY2021

Nutrient pollution enhances productivity and framework dissolution in algae- but not in coral-dominated reef communities

Nils Rädecker, Hal Hunt Jones II

Ecosystem services provided by coral reefs may be susceptible to the combined effects of benthic species shifts and anthropogenic nutrient pollution, but related field studies are scarce. We thus investigated in situ how dissolved inorganic nutrient enrich ...

2021

Scaling as a key conceptual tool for the interpretation of empirical and experimental patterns in ecology and biology

Silvia Zaoli

This thesis is concerned with regular patterns found in ecology and biology, their linkages and the statistical description of their fluctuations around average trends. Among such patterns, often conforming to power laws, well-known examples include the Sp ...

EPFL2018

Gravel bar inundation frequency: an important parameter for understanding riparian corridor dynamics

Anton Schleiss, Walter Gostner

Riparian zones are some of the most valuable and at the same time endangered ecosystems in the world. Their progressive degradation caused by anthropogenic pressure calls for the adoption of effective, resilient restoration strategies. However, a full unde ...

Springer Verlag2017

Subordinate plant species moderate drought effects on earthworm communities in grasslands

Alexandre Buttler, Claire Guenat, Pierre Rémi Mariotte, Renée-Claire Le Bayon

Loss of plant diversity resulting from forecasted drought events is likely to alter soil functioning and affect earthworm communities. Plant-soil interactions are expected to play an important role in mediating climate change effects on soil decomposers. I ...

Elsevier2016

L'espace public à Bogotá : entre les enjeux de la mobilité et la fragmentation urbaine

Yafiza Zorro Maldonado

There is a link between phenomena covered by the umbrella term «urban mobility» and the wealth of social and spatial dynamics active in de-structuring the city as a coherent spatial model, a process known as «urban fragmentation». It is therefore reasonabl ...

EPFL2015

Inferring species interactions in ecological communities: a comparison of methods at different levels of complexity

Andrea Rinaldo, Andrea Giometto, Francesco Carrara, Florian Altermatt

Natural communities commonly contain many different species and functional groups, and multiple types of species interactions act simultaneously, such as competition, predation, commensalism or mutualism. However, experimental and theoretical investigat ...

Wiley-Blackwell2015

GAPPARD: a computationally efficient method of approximating gap-scale disturbance in vegetation models

Jed Oliver Kaplan

Models of vegetation dynamics that are designed for application at spatial scales larger than individual forest gaps suffer from several limitations. Typically, either a population average approximation is used that results in unrealistic tree allometry an ...

Copernicus Gesellschaft Mbh2013

Toward the use of testate amoeba functional traits as indicator of floodplain restoration success

Edward Mitchell, Bertrand Fournier

Functional traits (FT) offer a new framework to understand the ecology of organisms and overcome taxonomic difficulties that currently limit the study of minute soil taxa. FT are likely to be selected by environmental filters and hence they may provide mor ...

2012

Has the Three-Gorges Dam made the Poyang Lake wetlands wetter and drier?

David Andrew Barry

The Three-Georges Dam holds many records in the history of engineering. While the dam has produced benefits in terms of flood control, hydropower generation and increased navigation capacity of the Yangtze River, serious questions have been raised concerni ...

American Geophysical Union2012

From green to clean: a promising and sustainable approach towards environmental remediation and human health for the 21st century

Jean-Paul Schwitzguebel

Phytotechnologies are ecotechnologies relating to the use of vegetation, to resolve environmental problems in a watershed management, by prevention of landscape degradation, remediation and restoration of degraded ecosystems, kontrol of environmental proce ...

2009

Predicting spacial similarity of freshwater fish biodiversity

Andrea Rinaldo, Mihaela Marian

A major issue in modern ecology is to understand how ecological complexity at broad scales is regulated by mechanisms operating at the organismic level. What specific underlying processes are essential for a macroecological pattern to emerge? Here, we anal ...

2009

Identifying Conservation and Restoration Priorities for Saproxylic and Old-Growth Forest Species: A Case Study in Switzerland

Saproxylic (dead-wood-associated) and old-growth species are among the most threatened species in European forest ecosystems, as they are susceptible to intensive forest management. Identifying areas with particular relevant features of biodiversity is of ...

Springer-Verlag2009

Cutover peatland regeneration assessment using organic matter and microbial indicators (bacteria and testate amoebae)

Alexandre Buttler, Edward Mitchell

Cutover peatlands cover large surfaces of high potential value for biodiversity and carbon sequestration function if successfully restored but the evaluation of restoration success is not straighforward. We assessed the bioindicator value of organic mat ...

2008