Announcements

ISMC Workshop 2025

The 24th and 25th of March ISMC will held a workshop at Wageningen University, Netherlands for internal communication and future planning. During the workshop 4 EU projects will be presented between 1300 and 1700 German Time. For online attendance use this Teams link

•    13°° - 1330     SoilProm Project (Coen Ritsema)

•    1330 - 14°°     Farmwise Project (Martine van der Ploeg) 

•    1430 – 15°°    OPTAIN Project (Csilla Farkas)

•    15°° - 1530     Wunder Project (Yijian Zeng)

Goldschmidt Conference at Praque 6-11 July 2025

We would like to draw your attention to our session at the Goldschmidt 2025 Conference, taking place in Prague, Czech Republic from July 6 - 11. Title: "Microbial ecology and elemental cycling in terrestrial and aquatic systems: integrating biogeochemistry, geomicrobiology and modeling" (Session 09a)

Conveners: Luciana Chavez Rodriguez, Gonzalo Gomez-Saez, Christof Meile, Felix Elling, Holger Pagel, Anna Störiko

The deadline for abstract submission is 26 February 2025.

You can find more details and instructions on how to submit an abstract here:

OZCAR-TERENO Conference 2025 in Paris September 29th to October 2nd

The 3^rd joint OZCAR-TERENO Conference will be in Paris from September 29th to October 2nd 2025. There are 15 Sessions planned covering a wide range of topics. Abstract submissions is open until 5th of May 2025. For more information visit the Website.

Featured Paper

Do you want your paper featured?

Please share your recent paper if you want to be featured in the ISMC newsletter. With your contributions, we will select one paper to be featured in every newsletter. Submission can be done here. 

A novel laboratory method for the retrieval of the soil water retention curve from shortwave infrared reflectance

The soil water retention curve (SWRC) is an essential soil property that relates soil water content and matric potential. It plays a crucial role in soil water dynamics and the understanding of various hydrological phenomena at the land surface, including infiltration, runoff, evaporation, and energy exchange processes. In recent years, proximal sensing methods have shown great potential for retrieving this challenging-to-measure property from spectral reflectance. However, a physically-based approach is still lacking as current methods rely on empirical data-driven algorithms. Here we propose a novel physics-based laboratory method that, for the first time, enables direct estimation of the entire SWRC from saturated to dry using soil water content/reflectance data pairs within the shortwave infrared domain. The main hypothesis underlying the new method is that soil optical properties not only vary with soil water content but also with the pore scale distribution of capillary and adsorbed soil water. For evaluation, retrieved soil water retention curves of 21 soils that vastly differ in physical and hydraulic properties were compared to direct measurements. The results suggest that the new method is a rapid and efficient alternative to established laboratory measurement methods. More information can be found here.

Featured Soil Modeller (Rafaella Chiarella)

Forest ecosystem modeling
 

Rafaella Chiarella is a PhD student at IBG-3 Jülich Forschungzentrum and member of the CoNnEcted group working under the supervision of Dr. Lutz  Weihermüller. She studied Physics in Lima, Peru and did her masters in environmental physics at the university of Bremen (Germany).
 

- Please tell us briefly about yourself and your research interest.
I am a peruvian physicist. I shortly worked on a research project in the Western Amazonia, studying the carbon dynamics, seasonal patterns, and responses to different stress sources using Eddy Covariance and other meteorological data from the measurements tower in Tambopata national park.  Later I came to Germany to pursue a masters in environmental physics in the university of Bremen.
My interests are in the carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus cycle in forests ecosystems. Forest growth, conservation and especially the response to climate change and extreme weather events. Forest soils unlike agricultural soils are rarely fertilized, they as well are often covered with grass, mosses, fungi and ferns. Healthy forest soil nutrients (N and P) rely on reaching equilibrium through tree biomass decomposition and tree nutrient uptake. Lately European forest that previously where N limited are now P limited. Understanding this shift is important for forest management. Extreme events like severe drought can induce mortality and potentially the ecosystem shifting to be a source instead of a sink when respiration is larger than gross primary production.

-  How did you first become interested in soil modeling and learn about ISMC?
I was introduced to soil sciences in my master, but it is on my current PhD project where I am working on developing the new forest module for agroC. My institute and the seminars have brought awareness of how important soils are for the environment and for food security which made me very passionate on the topic. It was my supervisor Lutz Weihermüller who introduced me to ISCM. I luckily was able to join the 2024 conference in Tianjin China, where I got to know many great scientists and learn about other interesting research in soil science. It was a wonderful experience.
 
-Can you share with us your current research focus? And, please tell us briefly how your research could contribute to ISMC Science Panel’s activities
At the moment I am working under Lutz Weihermüller  and Michael Herbst as a model developer for AgroC by incorporating a model module to simulate homogeneous forests. The new model that aims to simulate not only forest growth but also CO2 dynamics, water and solute fluxes, and colloidal transport of nutrients in forest ecosystems. The extension is able to simulate homogeneous forest of different tree species of tropical, deciduous, or boreal trees. The forest interacts and exchanges matter with the atmosphere and soil.

-Please tell us how can ISMC help you advance in your career?
ISMC is a platform and community that brings the opportunity to share our work with like minded individuals, to network and find possible collaborations and opportunities for young scientists. Science within a community with broad perspectives lead to greater results.

- What resources or skills would you recommend that early career members of ISMC should acquire? And how can ISMC help and support early career members in this regard?
There is two main skills I would recommend. First how to build and work in groups, join journal clubs and seminars either for networking or for future collaborations. Cultivating friendships and professional relationships with other scientists is very important for our careers. And the last would be get some experience in scientific communication and presentation. These are trained skills that require practice, it would be wonderful if ISMC could provide a space for young scientist to practice among each other before conferences.