At CHANGE we seek to improve current understanding and forecasting capabilities of land surface processes in natural and managed ecosystems. Our ultimate goal is the definition of adaptation strategies to future-proof soil and water resources in light of increasing anthropogenic and climatic pressures.
Research topics
1
Catchment water, carbon, and nutrient dynamics. We study the interactions between soil-plant dynamics, climatic variability, land erosion in natural and managed ecosystems, with applications ranging from forestry, to agriculture, and climate.
2
Ecohydrology of agroecosystems. We use and develop mathematical frameworks to tackle interlinked challenges of food security, climate change adapataion and mitigation, and environmental sustainability in agroecosystems.
3
Landscape evolution and soil erosion. We are intrested in understanding how landscapes evolve through multiple erosional and depositional processes and how these ultimately affect (and are affected by) vegetation and soil carbon dynamics.
Our key projects
SOCscape
We combine newly designed monitoring campaigns in Alpine catchments with state-of-the-art detailed numerical modeling to evaluate the dynamics of soil carbon redistribution, fluxes, and stocks in topographically complex landscapes. More here: https://www.epfl.ch/labs/change/research/assessing-soil-carbon-dynamics-in-landscapes-of-complex-topography-socscape/ .
By leveraging detailed numerical modeling of soil-plant dynamics, we quantify the benefits of different climate-smart agricultural practices, and identify the combinations of practices that concurrently optimize crop production, climate change mitigation, and preservation of environmental resources in different soils and ecoregions. More here: https://www.epfl.ch/labs/change/research/global-quantification-of-the-benefits-of-climate-smart-agriculture-under-future-climates-smart-agri/
We are developing a process-based framework that links hydrological and vegetation drivers with wetland micromorphology to assess their role in the net ecosystem carbon exchange, thus providing a tool to quantify carbon fluxes in wetland systems. More here: https://www.epfl.ch/labs/change/research/carbon-removal-in-wetland-restoration/
Extreme environments are particularly sensitive to climate change and are transforming at accelerated rates. This can have important global repercussions. EERL aims to create integrated process understanding by investigating interactions between the atmosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, ocean, land and anthroposphere. The goal is to characterize climate-change relevant and vertically-resolved processes that are directly influenced by humans, and natural processes that are simultaneously undergoing change due to climate forcing. The enhanced process understanding will enable us to better simulate the fate of extreme environments in the context of global change and resulting implications for society.
Research topics
1
We investigate the molecular-level chemical composition of aerosols with cutting edge instrumentation to determine the sources of the aerosol particles.
2
We study the vertical thermodynamic structure of the atmosphere and how aerosols are dispersed from the surface to higher altitudes where they participate in cloud formation.
3
We develop new analytical methods and facilities for vertical atmospheric measurements, notably a tethered balloon, the EERL helikite.
Our key projects
ORACLES
How are clouds formed in Antarctica? To answer this question we performed tethered balloon observations at Neumayer III station for the second season in a row.
Using the Swiss research sailboat Forel, we studied the ocean-ice-atmosphere interactions in Southern Greelandic fjords. This year, we deployed our new automated tethered balloon facility, AVATAR, to measure the vertical distribution of aerosol particles.
The TPS will drift for 18 months in the central Arctic Ocean ten times to observe the sea ice decline over the next 20 years. The EERL takes a leading role in atmospheric observations to understand the impact of aerosols on climate change.
The EERL developed in collaboration with the startup Invisible Light Labs (Vienna, Austria) and the LESC laboratory at EPFL a new technology to measure aerosol chemical composition. Using nanoelectrical membrane systems coupled to Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (NEMS-FTIR), we are now able to measure picograms of aerosol mass. The system is so light weight that it can be flown on EERL’s tethered balloon facility.
Julia Schmale was invited to the National Institute of Polar Research in Japan to discuss the future missions of the new icebreaker Mirai II.
2
Awards
Roman Pohorsky received the Environmental Engineering Doctoral School Thesis Award as well as the Early Career Scientist Award of the European Aerosol Society
Dr. Benjamin Heutte received the poster award at the Farrady Discussions conference of the Royald Chemical Society, UK
MSc Lorenzo Comi obtained the master thesis award of the Societé Suisse des Ingénieurs et des Architectes, Vaud.
Lionel Favre won a photograph award by the journal Nature in the category “Scientists at work”
3
New Funding
We are partners to two newly funded Swiss Polar Institute Flagship Programs: ARKTIS for Tara Polar Station and DOMINO for Antarctic research.
We were also funded by the BNP Paribas foundation in collaboration with French partners for the Tara Polar Station.
Team & talents
Lab team size
EERL has currently 17 members.
General skills
EERL members have educational backgrounds in engineering, meteorology, chemistry, physics and environmental science. We seek people that think creatively, love challenges, like to be outdoors in polar regions and care about environment and people.
Skills developed by the scientific team
Our skills comprise building new scientific instruments, developing analyses codes, illustrating our science results and capturing our research with stunning images.
Regional and social impacts
1
Our research helps to improve climate model simulations to better anticipate global challenges of climate change.
2
Our focus on air quality can help identify challenging weather patterns that exacerbate local pollution, particularly in winter when temperature inversions lead to high pollution in the Rhone Valley. In addition, we can quantify the impact on air pollution of Saharan dust events and long-range transported fire emissions.
3
Our routine observations in Valais at ALPOLE can guide operators of solar panels when a lot of dust deposition and hence lower performance is expected.
Perspectives and challenges
Priority 1
Study the decline of Arctic sea ice and the implications for weather in Europe
Priority 2
Understand how fast and when Antarctica will react to climate change
Priority 3
Cultivate a regenerative mind set to tackle sustainability challenges
Future Needs
New instruments that deliver high quality data and are light weight need to be developed long-lived batteries for autonous science stations are required
anti-icing materials that are environmentally friendly are needed.
Industry Partnerships
We seek partnerships with industry and start ups to work on solutions for our three main challenges.
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