Daria Ferraris, PhD student with Marta Galvagno and Dario Papale, started here 4-month visit with us to work on intercomparing CO2 flux measurements of a grazed and shrub-encroached mountain grassland and a mountain forest in Aosta Valley.

Daria Ferraris, PhD student with Marta Galvagno and Dario Papale, started here 4-month visit with us to work on intercomparing CO2 flux measurements of a grazed and shrub-encroached mountain grassland and a mountain forest in Aosta Valley.

Last week Kukkis and Nicholas from ETH Zürick/Grassland sciences visited us to discuss and exchange on COS soil, leaf and ecosystem-scale measurements. The best place for doing so is of course in the field and thus a visit to the FAIR site was included – see below.

Early october we received that the ESPRIT grant proposal that Sophie Baartman has put in to FWF will be funded – congrats to Sophie!
Starting with April 2026 Sophie will be working on one of the largest uncertainties in our process-understanding of the leaf-scale COS exchange, that is the internal COS conductance. She will address this topic using a mix of lab and field experiments using leaf gas exchange measurements and stable isotopes of COS (the latter in collaboration with Lisa Wingate/INRAE).
This Friday we were visited by both Alon Angert from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, with whom we discussed COS isotopes, but also the CLIMERS group from TU Wien, with whom we discussed deployment of a GNSS system for quantifying vegetation water content at the FAIR site.
The picture below shows Ruxandra, Nico and Wouter enjoying late summer conditions at the FAIR site.

Hänchen L., Potter E., Klein C., Calanca P., Maussion F., Gurgiser W., Wohlfahrt G. (2025) A Novel Framework for Analyzing Rainy Season Dynamics in semi-arid environments: A case study in the Peruvian Rio Santa Basin. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 29, 2727-2747, doi: 10.5194/hess-29-2727-2025.[OPEN ACCESS]