ICOS scientist Anne Klosterhalfen honoured with prestigious EGU Early Career Award
ICOS community is delighted to congratulate Dr. Anne Klosterhalfen, Postdoc at the University of Göttingen and scientific coordinator of the ICOS Hainich Ecosystem Station, on receiving the 2026 Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award from the European Geosciences Union (EGU) Biogeosciences Division. The award, presented at the EGU General Assembly in Vienna, recognises her outstanding contributions to improving measurements and understanding of ecosystem carbon and water fluxes, her commitment to collaborative research, and her dedication to education and outreach.
An ICOS scientist from the get-go
Anne's work sits at the heart of what ICOS does: generating high-quality, long-term observations of greenhouse gas fluxes between ecosystems and the atmosphere. As a specialist in the eddy covariance technique, she has dedicated her career to improving how we measure and interpret the exchange of CO₂, water vapour, and energy at land surfaces. These observations underpin our understanding of how forests and other ecosystems respond to climate change.
Anne encountered ICOS early in her career during her PhD studies at Research Center Jülich in Germany and has attributed the community as instrumental in helping her build and shape her science.
I felt welcomed by the ICOS ecosystem community from the very beginning. At my first EGU conference, my PhD supervisor, Alexander Graf, introduced me to so many eddy covariance people. It helped me build a strong network and led to quite a few collaborations.
After her PhD studies, Anne worked with Matthias Peichl at the ICOS atmosphere and ecosystem station in Svartberget, Sweden. Since 2021, Anne has served as the long-term scientific coordinator of the ICOS ecosystem station at Hainich in Germany. Anne with a team of technicians and other scientists works to ensure the quality and continuity of flux measurements, making data available to the wider scientific community for modelling and cross-disciplinary research.
Bridging scales, from tree to landscape
Nowadays, Anne's research focuses on land-atmosphere interactions, particularly in forest ecosystems, and how these systems respond to and feed back on climate change and disturbances. One of her scientific priorities is improving the methodology and post-processing approaches for eddy covariance data to reduce uncertainty, work that directly benefits the quality standards ICOS data is known for.
She is also working to bridge scientific scales: collaborating with plant physiologists studying individual trees, remote sensing scientists working at landscape level, and modellers using ICOS data to simulate ecosystem dynamics. This cross-disciplinary approach reflects the collaborative spirit at the core of the ICOS network.
Championing collaboration with the next generation of scientists
Beyond her own research, Anne is committed to mentoring students – she teaches courses at bachelor and master’s levels and currently supervises two PhD students. She is also a strong supporter of communicating science to broader audiences and has spoken openly about the importance of scientists not just producing findings, but ensuring those findings are understood by the people who need them.
We should always try to network or communicate with others, get help and support when needed. Exchanging with others usually helps me to keep up my motivation and reminds me of the purpose of our work.
One of the functions of a Research Infrastructure is to provide a platform to do excellent science. It is great that ICOS can play this role for early career scientists such as Anne. ICOS community warmly congratulates her on this well-deserved recognition!
Anne was nominated for the award by her PhD supervisor Alexander Graf (ICOS Ecosystem MSA Chair), Postdoc supervisor Alexander Knohl (PI of ICOS Hainich station), both pictured with Anne in the header image, as well as Matthias Peichl (PI of ICOS Svartberget station), not pictured.