Forest Dynamics ¶

Contents ¶

Topics
Projects
Research Groups and Staff

The Research Unit explores the functional significance of forest diversity with respect to the ecology of managed and unmanaged forests. In order to assess the future development of forests in Switzerland and other temperate and mountainous regions, the Unit pursues a threefold research agenda:

it performs basic research on forest diversity and its influence i) on forest dynamics, i.e. successional processes including tree growth, mortality and regeneration, and ii) on ecosystem goods and services;
it studies the disturbance agents such as storms, avalanches, fires and insects with respect to their occurrences and their impact on forest dynamics, as well as the importance of forest diversity to resist disturbance;
it investigates the impact of management operations on forest structure and development to improve sustainable forest management.

Based on the research outcomes, the Unit develops recommendations for best practice to sustain or improve forest products and services such as production of timber and other forest goods (e.g. mushrooms), catchment value, water quality, protection against natural hazards and pests, conservation and recreation. The infrastructure of the Research Unit includes extensive networks of forest study plots and laboratories for insects and fungi analysis.

The Unit has partners both within WSL and the wider scientific community. Stakeholders are mainly the forest services, forest owners and federal agencies.

Topics ¶

National Forest Inventory (NFI)

The NFI has been continually recording the condition and changes in the Swiss forest since 1983. The surveys take place every nine years.

Forests and Climate Change

Climate change will drastically alter the Swiss forest, with consequences for humans. WSL conducts research into the relevant processes.

Tree-ring research

Trees react to their environment. At WSL, tree-ring scientists date and analyze these natural archives.

Long-Term Forest Ecosystem Research (LWF)

We examine the long-term effects of stresses on the forest and identify the risks that are relevant to people.

SwissForestLab

The SwissForestLab is a research platform and infrastructural network in forest research.

Projects ¶

Phenology might not be only controlled by temperature, photoperiod and water availability but also by tree intrinsic factors related to sink-source relationships.

The aim of this project is to compare northern and southern hemispheres temperature histories over the past millennium using tree-ring anatomy data.

Quantitative Wood Anatomy is a novel proxy for understanding environmental conditions, but data-sharing is hindered by inadequate repositories. This project will create a flexible repository for wood cell data using open-source technologies to establish an interactive, user-friendly platform.

Ongoing shifts in land use and climate patterns are profoundly impacting forest dynamics, underscoring the critical role of biodiversity in fostering resilient ecosystems and sustaining vital ecosystem services. A review will provide on relevant measures to promote biodiversity in managed forests.

Nowcast and predict forest condition from TreeNet data with the help of machine learning.

Research Groups and Staff ¶

Forest Dynamics

Thomas Wohlgemuth	Member of Directors Board; Senior Scientist, interim Head of Research Unit
Christian Raphael Ledergerber	Master student
Elisabet Martinez Sancho	Visiting scientist
Andreas Rigling	Visiting scientist
Ulrich Wasem	Temporary employee

Dendrosciences

Georg von Arx	Group leader
Mattias Barigazzi	Technical staff member
Tamara Bibbo	PhD student guest
Jesper Björklund	Visiting scientist
Seraina Brandes	Master student
Antoine Cabon	Scientific staff member
Paolo Cherubini	Senior Scientist
Savannah Collins-Key	Visiting scientist
Micaela Dassié	Master student
Patrick Fonti	Senior Scientist
Holger Gärtner	Scientific staff member
Mona Louisa Hallenberger	Temporary employee
Lisa Marie Yvette Jourdain	PhD student
Valentino Känzig	Master student
Maurin Karzig	Master student
Marc Katzenmaier	PhD student guest
Stefan Klesse	Scientific staff member
Camille Marande	PhD student guest
Elisabet Martinez Sancho	Visiting scientist
Chloé Mayoraz	Master student
Mara Nägelin	Scientific staff member
Daniel Nievergelt	Technical staff member
Philipp Rüegg	Temporary employee / Scientific staff member
Nicola Antonio Santacroce	Temporary employee
Loïc Schneider	Technical staff member
Kristina Seftigen	Visiting scientist
Lenka Slámová-Matéju	Visiting scientist
Simona Staub	Master student
Nadja-Tamara Studer	Technical staff member
Jakub Svoboda	Master student
Kerstin Treydte	Senior Scientist
Anne Verstege	Technical staff member
Wenjin Wang	Postdoc

LWF I

Christoph Mullis

Technical staff member

Ecophysiology

Marcus Schaub	Group leader
William Aeberhard	Visiting scientist
Isabelle Arnold	Visiting scientist
David Jonas Basler	Postdoc
Carlo di Bello	PhD student
Sophia Etzold	Scientific staff member
Jonas Gisler	Technical staff member
Madeleine S. Goerg-Günthardt	Visiting scientist
Rudolf Häsler	Visiting scientist
Marie Horvath	Trainee
Dominik Andrin Hummel	Technical specialist
Maihe Li	Senior Scientist
Na Li	PhD student guest
Marcus Maeder	Visiting scientist
Capucine Agathe Marion	PhD student guest
Eliot Perrin	Master student
Richard Peters	Visiting scientist
Volodymyr Trotsiuk	Data Scientist
Pierre Vollenweider	Scientific staff member
Yanli Zhang	PhD student
Roman Zweifel	Scientific staff member

Ecosystem Ecology

Arthur Gessler	Group leader
Mark Anthony	Visiting scientist
Tito Arosio	Postdoc
Frederik Baumgarten	Visiting scientist
Mirela Beloiu Schwenke	Visiting scientist
Julia Born	Project Manager
Arun Bose	Scientific staff member
Alessandra Bottero	Scientific staff member
Liangzhi Chen	Postdoc
Olga Churakova	Visiting scientist
Valentin Comte	Visiting scientist
Maaike De Boer	Visiting scientist
Haoyu Diao	Postdoc
Petra DOdorico	Scientific staff member
Luca Ferrari	Visiting scientist
Elham Freund	Visiting scientist
Matthias Haeni	IT specialist
Firoozeh Hatami	PhD student guest
Christian Hug	Technical staff member
Stefan Hunziker	Scientific staff member
Stefan Klesse	Scientific staff member
Frank Krumm	Scientific staff member
Marco Lehmann	Scientific staff member
Jelle Lever	Postdoc
Martin Ley	Administrative specialist
Mirko Lukovic	Scientific staff member
Yunpeng Luo	Scientific staff member
Regine Maier	Administrative specialist
Vincent Masserey	PhD student guest
Selma Margot Müller
Christoph Mullis	Technical staff member
Eugénie Paul-Limoges	Scientific staff member
Simone Maria Pieber	Scientific staff member
Nicole Quartini	Trainee
Martine Rebetez	Senior Scientist
Matthias Saurer	Scientific staff member
Léonard Schneider	Visiting scientist
Pascal Schneider	PhD student
Ryan Shipley	Scientific staff member
Rolf Siegwolf	Visiting scientist
Lynsay Spafford	Guest
Flurin Sutter	GIS specialist
Jan Svoboda	Scientific staff member
Volodymyr Trotsiuk	Data Scientist
Valentina Vitali	Visiting scientist
Yann Vitasse	Scientific staff member
Manuel Walde	Visiting scientist
Micah Wilhelm	Scientific assistant
Zhaofei Wu	Visiting scientist
Zhongyu Xia	PhD student guest
Artin Zarsav	PhD student
Jan Ziegler	Technical specialist

rog. SwissForestLab

Yann Vitasse

Scientific staff member

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