News

New paper: how much does field mapping improve SOC predictions?

Published:27.08.26 — Freely available maps can only tell you so much about where mountain soil carbon hides. Gino's new study in Soil Advances tests what field mapping adds on top.

New paper: what drives soil carbon in subalpine landscapes?

Published:27.08.26 — Why does soil organic carbon vary so much across a mountain landscape? In his new study published in Geoderma, Bence finds answers to this question.

SOIL welcomes summer interns

Published:28.07.26 — SOIL is welcoming four interns this summer: Alice, Clémence, Corentin and Isabelle. Damien is back with the lab as a technician.

SOIL at Goldschmidt 2026

Published:28.07.26 — Meret co-convened a session and gave an invited talk at this year's Goldschmidt conference in Montréal.

New paper in Communications Earth & Environment

Published:24.07.26 — In our new paper in Communications Earth & Environment, we asked how the chemical composition of extractable organic matter shapes soil microbial carbon metabolism across soil systems.

New preprint on the redox properties of iron in clay minerals

Published:15.05.26 — In our new preprint on ChemRxiv, we investigated how the presence of iron in the tetrahedral sheet of smectite clay minerals affects their redox properties.

New PNAS paper on manganese oxide reactivity

Published:15.05.26 — In our new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we developed a thermodynamic framework to predict how fast manganese oxides dissolve under environmentally relevant conditions.

New paper on microbial carbon cycling in alpine soils

Published:15.05.26 — In our new paper published as part of the Emerging Investigator Series in Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts, we used shotgun metagenomics to investigate how microbial communities and their functional potential vary with soil redox conditions across alpine riparian landscapes.

SOIL at EGU 2026

Published:08.05.26 — Four SOILies presented their research at the EGU General Assembly 2026 in Vienna.

Welcome, Michelangelo!

Published:07.05.26 — Michelangelo Vuono started his PhD journey at SOIL on May 1st. Welcome, Michelangelo!

Meet the SOIL Lab

Published:07.05.26 — We are delighted to share this short film introducing the people, research, and places behind the Soil Biogeochemistry Laboratory.

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.