2021

This is another great success! The Swiss National Science Foundation and Innosuisse funds our project Spatial sustainable finance: Satellite-based ratings of company footprints in biodiversity and water. The project is an interdisiplinary collaboration between us, the Earth Systems Science group (Maria Santos) and colleagues at ZHAW (Peter Schwendner and Patrick Laube). Our project aims to set a global rating standard that enables financial institutions and companies to reduce their biodiversity and water footprint.

A new paper on Mapping the spatial distribution of NO2 with in situ and remote sensing instruments during the Munich NO2 imaging campaign with contributions by Alexander Damm was published in the Discussion of Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. This paper shows results of a measurement campaign to quantify atmospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations with stationary, mobile and airborne in situ and remote sensing instruments.

A new paper on Estimating near-infrared reflectance of vegetation from hyperspectral data with contributions by Alexander Damm was published in Remote Sensing of Environment. This study suggests a new NIRv based strategy to compensate anisotropy effects in directional measurements of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence.

Eugenie Paul-Limoges was an invited speaker and panelist at the AmeriFlux
annual meeting session on ‘ET challenges and opportunities’. This meeting helped to foster lively discussions on how to resolve the current challenges in ET partitioning.

Remika Gupana presents her latest reserach results to advance the use of sun-induced chlorophyll retrieval for aquatic applications at the 2021 SPIE Sensors + Imaging 2022 conference.

A new paper entitled "Preliminary Investigation on Phytoplankton Dynamics and Primary Production Models in an Oligotrophic Lake from Remote Sensing Measurements" with contributions by Remika Gupana was published in Sensors (Special Issue Remote Sensing of Water Quality and Water Environment). This study represents a preliminary outcome supporting the primary production monitoring in clear inland waters by means of remote sensing-based indices and fluorescence metrics.

A new paper on "Downscaling of far-red solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence of different crops from canopy to leaf level using a diurnal data set acquired by the airborne imaging spectrometer HyPlant " with contributions by Alexander Damm was published in the Remote Sensing of Environment. The paper expands current knowledge about the impact of structure on the linkage between canopy and leave level SIF by considering both the spatial and temporal dimension.

A new paper showing that "Root hydraulic redistribution underlies the insensitivity of soil respiration to combined heat and drought", with contributions by Alexander Damm, was published in the Applied Soil Ecology. The paper shows results form a novel lab experiment on water movement in the soil-plant system and has relevant implications to better understand large scale processes.

RSWS, the Reserach Centre Jülich and Czech Globe joint forces to map various ecosystems in Switzerland and Germany using the HyPlant fluorescence spectrometer. Resulting data will facilitate our research on ecosystem water relations in the context of climate extremes and biodiversity.

A new paper on "The PRISMA imaging spectroscopy mission: overview and first performance analysis" with contributions by Alexander Damm was published in the Remote Sensing of Environment. The paper provides an overview on mission and outlines how in situ radiometric measurements can be combined with airborne data to evaluate spectral and radiometric performance of satellite measurements.

A new review paper by Remika Gupana on "Remote sensing of sun-induced chlorophyll-a fluorescence in inland and coastal waters: Current state and future prospects” was published in Remote Sensing of Environment. The paper provides insight on the origin of the fluorescence signal and a comprehensive overview on available instrumentation, methods and applications.

We recently upgraded the Davos test site with high resolution pointing spectrometer (FloX) continuously measuring sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence and other plant traits. With this third instrument, we expand our growing network of tower based spectrometer systems, and contribute to the FLUO4ECO and EcoDrive projects. A big Thank You to Eugenie, Philippe and all involved people making this possible!

We warmly welcome Moritz Bruggisser. Moritz works in the Grasland Sciences group at ETH and is associated with our group via the joint SNF project EcoDrive.

We warmly welcome Jasmin Kesselring as new PhD student in our group. Jasmin also works in the SNF project FLUO4ECO and will explore strategies to measure 3D dynamics of gas exchange in forest ecosystems.

A new paper by Alexander Damm "On the seasonal relation of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence and transpiration in a temperate mixed forest”  was published in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. With a strong focus on causality between fluorescence measurements and forest transpiration, the paper discusses requirements for robust remote sensing based assessment schemes of ecosystem transpiration.

A new paper on "Improved global estimations of gross primary productivity of
natural vegetation types by incorporating plant functional type" with contributions by Eugenie Paul-Limoges was published in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation.

We launched a new M.Sc. course entitled Earth System Observations and Analysis (ESS 417). It is great to see the large interest of students to learn how we can best exploit the breath of observational approaches to gain understanding of our Earth system!

We warmly welcome Veronika Oehl as new PhD student in our group. Veronika contributes to the SNF project FLUO4ECO and will explore new possibilities to retrieve vegetation and environmental information from spectroscopy data.

We warmly welcome Vincent Humphrey as new PostDoctoral researcher in our group. Vincnet won a SNF PostDoc.Mobility return grant and will spend the next year to investigate Water-Carbon interactions in the Earth system.

Alexander Damm was elected as president of the Swiss Commission on Remote Sensing (SCRS). SCRS is a body of the Swiss Academy of Sciences (scnat) and aims promoting, coordinating and consulting research and scientific collaboration in the field of remote sensing.