News Archive

Humans are having a highly detrimental impact on biodiversity worldwide. Not only are the numbers of species declining, but the composition of species communities is also changing. This is shown by a study by Eawag and the University of Zurich published in the scientific journal “Nature”. It is one of the largest studies ever conducted on this topic.

After three years of dedicated work, Florian Trepp and his team have successfully catalogued and photographed approximately 2,000 objects in the Anatomical Collection of Domestic Animals at the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, ETH Zurich, led by Susanne Ulbrich. The collection, which includes some antique specimens, is now available to the public in the virtual world of the nahima (Natural History Collections Management digitally) of the ETH Library database.

Stream networks are often mapped as fixed features, but they actually extend and retract as the landscape wets up and dries out. Researchers from University of California (UC) and ETH Zurich have been tracking how much stream networks stretch and shrink in response to rainfall and drought. Their study is the first attempt to estimate this dynamic behaviour at a large scale across the continental United States.

Grace Crain-Wright, a plant ecologist and STEM educator, takes us on an extraordinary journey from her academic roots in the US to her cutting-edge research at ETH Zurich.

Up to that 9.4% of Earth's terrestrial ecosystems face potential transformation by 2050 due to changes in tropical cyclone activity. In their study, Chahan M. Kropf and colleagues from ETH Zurich show the significant impact of changing tropical cyclone patterns on global ecosystems.