In a field study Samiullah Khan investigated - under supervision of Martin Kainz and Thomas Hein - how particulate organic matter (POM) and dissolved organic matter (DOM) quantity and its biochemical quality changed between lake inflow and outflow as well as within the oligotrophic Lake Lunz from 2013 to 2015. In April he successfully finished his thesis with the title „Biochemical characterization of particulate and dissolved organic matter in pre-alpine Lake Lunz“.
A lot of interested guests visited the station of WasserCluster Lunz at the Long Night of Research on April 22nd. WasserCluster Lunz presented current research projects at the "Institute of Science and Technology Austria - IST Austria" in Klosterneuburg and at the Danube University Krems.
At WasserCluster Lunz we welcomed on April 14th around 20 taiwanese collegues who visited the research center in the course of an excursion. The taiwanese scientists stayed in Austria for a seminar funded by the FWF an discussed with the WasserCluster scientists present and future joint projects.
Biofilms are hotspots of microbial diversity in streams and orchestrate biogeochemical fluxes. Master student Lukas Thuile Bistarelli investigated under supervision of Tom J. Battin and Jakob Schelker the effect of soil additions on benthic biofilms and DOM dynamics using six streamside mesocosms to simulate natural streams. In March he successfully finished his thesis.
Around the globe we can observe, that lakes are getting warmer, also Lake Lunz. The temperature rise implicates movements of fish, plankton and algae. Following an invitation of the Naturkundlichen Gesellschaft Mostviertel the working-group leaders Martin Kainz and Robert Ptacnik held a talk in Scheibbs on March 11th about this issue. Many intrested listeners took part at this evening.
Scientific projects which are performed with the help of interested amateurs – this method is called Citizen Science. To raise its quality was in the focus of the „Second Austrian Citizen Science Conference“, which was held on 18th and 19th February at WasserCluster Lunz.
Csaba Vad, member of the WasserCluster team, was awarded one of the treasured Marie-Curie-Fellowships, which are funded by the Horizon 2020 Programme of the EU. In the focus of the two-year project is the research of chrysophytes, which are predicted to increase with climate warming, what implys serious consequences for trophic efficiency and fish production.
Glaciers and streams are in the focus of Christina Faschings PhD-thesis. She investigated the role of dissolved organic matter (DOM) for carbon cycling. The degradation of terrestrial DOM in streams was for example shown to potentially contribute to CO2 evasion to the atmosphere. In October Christina Fasching successfully finished her thesis.