Publications by Rodolphe Schlaepfer

Impacts of snow-farming on alpine soil and vegetation: A case study from the Swiss Alps

Alexandre Buttler, Pierre Rémi Mariotte, Rodolphe Schlaepfer, Juan Carlos Quezada Rivera, Lucas Georges Jean-Paul Freund

Snow-farming is one of the adaptive strategies used to face the snow deficit in ski resorts. We studied the impact of a shifting snow-farming technique on a pasture slope in Adelboden, Switzerland. Specifically, we compared plots covered by a compressed sn ...

2023

Ericoid shrub encroachment shifts aboveground-belowground linkages in three peatlands across Europe and Western Siberia

Alexandre Buttler, Rodolphe Schlaepfer

In northern peatlands, reduction of Sphagnum dominance in favour of vascular vegetation is likely to influence biogeochemical processes. Such vegetation changes occur as the water table lowers and temperatures rise. To test which of these factors has a sig ...

WILEY2023

Composition and superposition of alluvial deposits drive macro-biological soil engineering and organic matter dynamics in floodplains

Claire Guenat, Pascal Turberg, Rodolphe Schlaepfer, Renée-Claire Le Bayon, Andreas Cedric Schomburg

Soil structure formation in alluvial soils is a fundamental process in near-natural floodplains. A stable soil structure is essential for many ecosystem services and helps to prevent river bank erosion. Plants and earthworms are successful soil engineering ...

2019

Responses of antinomic foliar traits to experimental climate forcing in beech and spruce saplings

Alexandre Buttler, Rodolphe Schlaepfer, Constant Signarbieux, María Paula Sanginés De Cárcer

Global warming is predicted to have a strong impact on mountain ecosystems. Subalpine sylvopastoral systems are very sensitive to climate change, which puts their future sustainability at stake. These ecosystems are mostly dominated by spruce and beech, an ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2017

Asymmetric effects of cooler and warmer winters on beech phenology last beyond spring

Alexandre Buttler, Rodolphe Schlaepfer, Constant Signarbieux, María Paula Sanginés De Cárcer, Yann Vitasse, Ester Toledano Díaz

In temperate trees, the timings of plant growth onset and cessation affect biogeochemical cycles, water, and energy balance. Currently, phenological studies largely focus on specific phenophases and on their responses to warming. How differently spring phe ...

Wiley2017

Linking historical land use to present vegetation and soil characteristics under slash-and-burn cultivation in Madagascar

Alexandre Buttler, Rodolphe Schlaepfer, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills, Andry Randriamikatra Randrianarison

Aim: In this paper, we link historical land use of cultivated parcels formerly slashed and burnt, with current secondary vegetation and soil characteristics, in the region of evergreen rain forest in Madagascar. Aim is to understand the legacy effect of fo ...

Wiley-Blackwell2016

Quantifying Biomass Of Secondary Forest After Slash-And-Burn Cultivation In Central Menabe, Madagascar

Alexandre Buttler, Rodolphe Schlaepfer, Jean-Michel Gobat

RAHARIMALALA O, BUTTLER A, SCHLAEPFER R & GOBAT J-M. 2012. Quantifying biomass of secondary forest after slash-and-burn cultivation in Central Menabe, Madagascar. Biomass is the principal input of nutrients in slash-and-burn cultivation of tropical dry dec ...

Forest Research Inst Malaysia2012

Looking for differences in wood properties as a function of the felling date: lunar phase-correlated variations in the drying behavior of Norway Spruce (Picea abies Karst.) and Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.)

Rodolphe Schlaepfer

A large-scale field experiment on the drying behavior of Norway Spruce (Picea abies Karst.) and Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) in relation to the felling date was conducted over a period of 24 weeks in order to investigate the existence of variatio ...

2010

Landscape effects on anuran pond occupancy in an agricultural countryside: barrier-based buffers predict distributions better than circular buffers

Rodolphe Schlaepfer, Flavio Zanini, Anna Klingemann

Species movement and occupancy of habitat patches are dependent on landscape permeability. Some land-use types (e.g., roads) may be barriers to animal movement. Analyses of the effect of landscape structure on patch occupancy usually use circular buffers a ...

2008

Modelling the impact of flooding stress on the growth performance of woody species using fuzzy logic

Rodolphe Schlaepfer

Among the driving processes responsible for riparian forest dynamics the species-specific impact of flooding on the development of woody plants plays a key role-particularly for lowland rivers. Only a few of the forest succession models currently in use in ...

2008