Science Day 2026 ¶
The SwissForestLab Science Day will take place on January 16, 2026 at the University of Bern We will meet at:
Institute of Geography (GIUB)
Room: EG-001
Hallerstrasse 12
3012 Bern
This year's theme is "Understanding the carbon balance at the organ, tree and forest ecosystem level".
The one-day event will bring together researchers to investigate the factors and processes that influence carbon (C) balance dynamics at multiple scales. The focus of the event is on understanding the carbon budget from tree organs and individual trees to whole forest ecosystems. Contributions that either deal in depth with a single level or combine several levels are welcome.
The SwissForestLab ScienceDay 2026 will serve as a platform to showcase the breadth of science within the SwissForestLab community and unite diverse efforts in basic and applied research through a common interest in forest productivity, sensitivity, resilience, biodiversity and carbon balance. It will bring together contributions from all areas of forest research aimed at identifying, quantifying, monitoring and modeling past, current and future environmental stresses on trees and forests, as well as applied research for forest management and restoration in the face of advancing climate change.
We are pleased to welcome Dr. Sebastiaan Luyssaert from the Systems Ecology Research Group of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam as keynote speaker. More details about the event will follow in the upcoming updates.
The SFL ScienceDay is designed as a platform for young scientists (PhD students and postdocs) to present and discuss their research within the SwissForestLab network. In addition, it offers members a good opportunity for exchange and networking within the SFL community.
As every year, you will have the opportunity to submit your contribution (poster or talk) to a competition in which the two most outstanding contributions will be published in the Swiss Forest Journal (SZF).
- Registration
- Program (pdf-file, 312 KB)
- SFL Science Day Booklet (pdf-file, 537 KB)
Program
| 08:00 - 09:00 | Registration | ||
| Session 1 | Chair | Bernhard, Fabian | |
| 09:00 - 09:05 | 1.0 | Gessler, Arthur | Welcome by the Chairman of SwissForestLab |
| 09:05 - 09:10 | 1.1 | Bernhard, Fabian | Introduction to Geocomputation and Earth Observation (GECO) lab (Inst of Geography, University of Bern) |
| 09:10 - 09:40 | 1.2 | Luyssaert, Sebastiaan | Keynote: Continental scale forest management: think global, act local Managing Swiss forests towards net zero in a changing climate |
| 9:40 - 09:55 | 1.3 | Paul-Limoges, Eugenie | Managing Swiss forests towards net zero in a changing climate |
| 09:55 - 10:10 | 1.4 | Etzold, Sophia | Decreasing water availability reduces productivity in Swiss forests along an altitudinal gradient. |
| 10:10 - 10:25 | 1.5 | Zhou, Yu | Atmospheric Deposition Outweighs Dryness in Regulating European Ecosystem Productivity |
| 10:30 - 11:00 | Coffee break | ||
| 11:00 - 11:15 | 1.6 | El-Mejjaouy, Yousra | Detecting physiological drought impacts on ecosystem physiology from multispectral, thermal, and meteorological remote sensing data |
| 11:15 - 11:30 | 1.7 | Rog, Ido | Increased belowground tree carbon allocation in a mature mixed forest in a dry vs. a wet year |
| 11:30 - 11:45 | 1.8 | Guidi, Claudia | Drivers of soil organic carbon from temperate to alpine forests: a modelbased analysis of the Swiss forest soil inventory |
| 11:45 - 12:00 | 1.9 | de Jong, Philipp | Interactions between earthworm species enhance litter-derived carbon stabilization in the mineral soil |
| 12:00 - 13:45 | Lunch break | ||
| Session 2 | Chair | Lachat, Thibault | |
| 13:45 - 13:50 | 2.0 | Lachat, Thibault | Introduction to Forest Ecology lab (Bern University of Applied Sciences BFH) |
| 13:50 - 14:05 | 2.1 | Buchmann, Nina | Soil, below-canopy and ecosystem CO2 and CH4 fluxes and their drivers in a subalpine spruce forest |
| 14:05 - 14:20 | 2.2 | Ehming, Merten | Four Decades of Forest Development in the Context of Nitrogen Eutrophication and Climate Change |
| 14:20 - 14:35 | 2.3 | Chen, Liangzhi | Multiyear droughts and ecosystem responses – A global look |
| 14:35 - 15:00 | Coffee break | ||
| 15:00 - 15:15 | 2.4 | Gessler, Arthur | What if we could reconstruct tree metabolism and explore how environmental factors influence it through tree rings? |
| 15:15 - 15:30 | 2.5 | Lukovic, Mirko | Point dendrometer and climate data processing with temporal convolution networks |
| Poster Pitches | |||
| 15:30 - 15:35 | 2.6 | Wright-Osment, Nicholas | Measuring Carbonyl Sulfide Fluxes for Enhanced Insight into Carbon Dynamics in a Mixed Forest |
| 15:35 - 15:40 | 2.7 | Bernhard, Fabian | Model-data fusion of daily ecosystem fluxes and forest inventories with a Emerging Opportunities dynamic vegetation model |
| 15:40 - 15:45 | 2.8 | Haoyu, Diao | Contrasting photosynthetic, stomatal, and under blue light |
| 15:45 - 15:50 | 2.9 | Schneider, Pascal | Early Warning Signals for Tree Mortality: A Review of Indicators, Limitations, and |
| 15.50- 17:00 | Poster Session & Apéro |
Registration is now open and closes on January 9, 2026. You have the option to submit your contribution in the form of a talk or poster or simply attend the conference. The participation fee for members of SwissForestLab is CHF 50, non-members pay a fee of CHF 100 (a rich vegetarian lunch, coffee during the breaks and an aperitif are already included in the registration fee). You will find the link to the registration form below.
Registration link:
Registration link for the ScienceDay 2026:
If you would like to give a poster presentation or oral presentation, please send the corresponding abstract with a maximum length of 250 words to the e-mail address below. Once the review process has been completed, you will be informed of the decision in a separate e-mail. The deadline for the submission of abstracts for oral and poster presentations is also December 15, 2025.
Link forabstract submission:
We look forward to welcoming you soon at SFL ScienceDay 2026.
Your organization team