Arve

The ARVE (Atmosphere Regolith Vegetation) research group at the EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) is a research unit of the Institute of Environmental Engineering of ENAC (School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering). Our work focuses on studying how changes in the terrestrial biosphere amplify changes in the climate system; We examine the interaction between soils, vegetation and the atmosphere. A major scientific challenge of the past decade has been incorporating the three labile reservoirs of the carbon cycle: atmosphere, oceans and land, into a comprehensive modelling framework to assess the fate and impact of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The consequent development of Earth System Models of varying complexity has allowed the estimation of the importance of anthropogenic emissions and land management policy for climate. Using earth system models as a tool has led to the development of scenarios that are widely applied to predict future climate based on hypotheses about future trends in human demographic, economic and technological development. While great progress has been made, little activity has focused on a single greenhouse gas: CO2. The goal of the ARVE group is to integrate key missing components of the land-atmosphere chemical system into Earth System Models.