Projects at the research group Vegetation Ecology

The loss of biodiversity in Switzerland is serious overall, but it is not clear in detail which aspects of species diversity have changed and how, nor what role various drivers play in this. With various projects and numerous student theses, our research group is one of the leading players in Switzerland and internationally in improving the state of knowledge. In the SquareFoot project, we used around 600 historical vegetation records from grasslands dating from 1870 to 1930 to address this question by repeating surveys after a long period of time and across the whole country. In the VegCHange project, we are broadening the perspective to include all habitats in Switzerland, all time periods since 1900, and, in addition to vascular plants, also bryophytes, lichens and charophytes, using a variety of data sources in combination with modern statistical methods.

Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
Project duration: 2021–2025 and 2025-2029
More information: SquareFoot, VegCHange

Invasive alien plants are becoming an increasingly significant problem in Switzerland. These non-native plants can have a considerable negative impact on biodiversity and the functioning of ecosystems, damage infrastructure and spread rapidly. Until now, the identification of neophytes has mostly been carried out manually, making the process inefficient, costly and, at times, unreliable. This research project aims to develop a solution based on drones and machine learning (AI) to automatically detect the most significant neophytes from the air.

Project partners: Universität Zürich, CSEM, ExoLabs
Client: SBB, Innosuisse
Duration: 2023-2026
Further information: Project website