Thomas Laemmel

SSS Soil System Sciences

The 2018 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Thomas Laemmel for the poster/PICO entitled:

Effect of local airflow on flux chamber measurements (Laemmel, T.; Mayer, S.; Mohr, M.; Schack-Kirchner, H.; Lang, F.; Maier, M.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Thomas Laemmel is a PhD student at Soil Ecology, Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources of the University of Freiburg, Germany. After studying geophysics and environmental engineering, he started a PhD project about the exchange of gases between the soil and the atmosphere. He focused on the so-called “pressure-pumping effect” which is a wind-induced modification of the regular diffusive gas transport process in porous media such as soil or snow.
The awarded poster contribution at EGU 2018 presented results of a field experiment assessing the effect of wind on chamber flux measurements. The originality of the results lays in the use of an inert tracer gas (CF4) to isolate the effect of wind on soil gas transport and to assess the implication for chamber measurements. Measurements of soil gas flux that originate from biological sources include the signal of the physics of soil gas transport, the possible signal (bias) of the methodology (chamber measurements) and the biological signal of the source, what we are usually interested in. With this new approach, the different signals can be better separated and measurement artefacts can be more easily identified, what will eventually help to improve the quality of chamber measurements.