News

New preprint explores soil carbon in subalpine grasslands

Published:24.03.26 — Why does soil organic carbon build up in some places but not in others, even within the same grassland? In a new preprint, Bence Dienes and colleagues take a closer look at this question in subalpine environments, where soils can change dramatically over short distances.

Welcome, Elisa!

Published:12.03.26 — Elisa just joined SOIL as a doctoral student. Welcome!

Welcome back, Clara and Xinru!

Published:23.02.26 — We are excited to have Dr. Xinru Liu and Clara Guadalupe Herrera as our two latest SOILies. Welcome back!

New preprint links microbial metabolism to organic matter chemistry

Published:22.01.26 — In his new preprint, Daniel investigated if bulk soil microbial growth and respiration is linked to the chemical composition of extractable organic matter along a geoclimatic gradient of temperate grasslands.

New project on clay minerals

Published:26.11.25 — Jeffrey Catalano and Meret Aeppli have received a seed grant to launch a new collaboration using iron-containing clay minerals to recover lithium from water while locking away harmful contaminants.

New SOIL members for fall semester

Published:02.10.25 — Clara, Arnaut, and Manon are joining SOIL for their theses this semester. Dylan joined us for his civil service and Gino is back at SOIL. Welcome!

New preprint on carbon cycling in alpine soils

Published:02.10.25 — How do microbes and organic matter shape carbon cycling in alpine soils? A new preprint from our group combines metagenomics and pyrolysis GC-MS to find out.

New preprint on manganese redox chemistry

Published:12.08.25 — Xinru's manuscript "Predicting rates of manganese oxide reduction from thermodynamic driving forces and structural properties" is now available as a preprint on ChemRxiv. The corresponding dataset can be found on Zenodo. Congratulations to Xinru and all co-authors for this amazing piece of work!

New publication in Soil Biology and Biochemistry

Published:30.07.25 — Our review article on Climate change impacts on organic carbon cycling in European alpine soils is now published open access in Soil Biology and Biochemistry.

Two new SOILies and one summer visitor

Published:29.07.25 — We are pleased to welcome Clara Guadalupe Herrera as our summer intern, Damien Roy as our new civiliste, and Anke Herrmann as a visitor!

Soil and gas monitoring campaign in Balmoos

Published:22.07.25 — Filippo started the field monitoring campaign for this project.

Orly and Daniel attended the MicroSoil workshop

Published:26.06.25 — Orly and Daniel attended the MicroSoil workshop in France.

New website on soil organic carbon in the Swiss Alps

Published:12.06.25 — The data collected and modeled by Kristina and Bence as part of their project on Mechanisms of soil organic carbon stabilization in mountain soils is now publicly available at alpinesoc.epfl.ch. Go and take a look!

Scientific Sense Podcast and Tagesschau

Published:05.06.25 — Meret was a guest on the Scientific Sense Podcast and the SOIL laboratory appeared on the Tagesschau.

SOIL at Scientastic

Published:03.06.25 — SOIL had a booth at the Scientastic festival. We had a great weekend explaining our work to the public!

Fabrice started his stay at SOIL

Published:08.05.25 — Fabrice Tra started his first 3-month stay at SOIL. His supervisor from his home university, Prof. Bomisso, joined him for his first week in Sion.

Vineeth joined SOIL

Published:18.03.25 — Vineeth joined SOIL as a postdoctoral researcher at the beginning of the March. Welcome, Vineeth!

Field work in Brazil

Published:23.01.25 — Orly has recently travelled to our collaborators in Brazil to collect soils for his project.

New publication in Geoderma

Published:21.01.25 — A study led by Emily Lacroix, who is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lausanne, and Meret was recently published in Geoderma. 

Daniel joined SOIL

Published:21.01.25 — SOIL has a new postdoctoral reseracher: welcome, Daniel!