News 2013

Highlights

Johan Six

The 2013 Wiley Prize for the Best Paper in Earth Surface Processes and Landforms in 2012 (Towards Constraining the magnitude of global agricultural sediment and soil organic carbon fluxes; by Sebastian Doetterl, Kristof Van Oost, Johan Six)

Citation classics
“external pageAggregate-associated soil organic matter as an ecosystem property and a measurement tool” by Johan Six and Keith Pausian

“external pageSpare our restored soil” by Johan Six

Engil Pereira

Engil Pereira, Ph.D. student in the Sustainable Agroecosystems research group, under Dr. Johan Six supervision, had a paper highlighted by the external pageJournal Nature Climate Change. The paper, published in the
external pageSoil Science Society of America Journal, found that reduced precipitation, not elevated CO2 in the atmosphere, led to the formation of protective microhabitats that foster soil microbial communities.

- Visiting Ph.D. student Engil Pereira from the University of California, Davis, was awarded a Swiss Government Excellence scholarship to conduct part of her dissertation research on the effects of biochar application on N cycling in Agroecosystems.

Juhwan Lee and Charlotte Decock

Juhwan Lee and Charlotte Decock received a Plant Fellows postdoc fellowship for January 2014 - December 2015 from the Zurich–Basel Plant Science Center. Lee's project is entitled "Predicting regional crop production in response to climate extremes". He will focus on Swiss cropping systems and perform biogeochemical modelling with DAYCENT. Decock's project is entitled "Rooting for a sustainable future: Can crops with greater rooting systems improve nitrogen retention and mitigate emissions of nitrous oxide". She will use a novel stable isotope-based approach to assess the intricate relationships between plants, soil, and nitrogen cycling.