The SOCscape field campaign kicks off in the Swiss Alps!
© 2025 EPFL
With the beginning of the summer season, Fred has started the field campaign in Val d'Arolla and Vallon the Nant as part of the SNSF-funded project SOCscape (assessing soil carbon dynamics in landscapes of complex topography).
As part of the SOCscape project, Frédéric Lardet has started an extensive field campaign in our two study sites in the Western Swiss Alps. In collaboration with Stella Braunschweig (PhD student at ETHZ Zurich) and with the support of our field technician Sebastian Vivero, Fred installed hydrological sensors in the streams draining these catchments to understand sediment and carbon dynamics, conducted drone flights to quantify erosion patterns, and helped digging soil pits to characterize soil profiles in Vallon de Nant and Arolla. Combined with numerical simulations, these results will help us elucidate the dynamics of lateral soil carbon redistribution across environmentally complex and geochemically distinct alpine landscapes.
The upcoming months of August and September will still be dedicated to fieldwork, with water and sediment sampling as well as additional drone flights for Fred, while Stella will finish the collection of soil samples before starting the analyses in the lab.
More news to come in the next months!
