At this year's meeting of the Association of Limnologists in Austria (SIL-Austria) at the Biological Station Neusiedlersee in Illmitz, limnologists, geologists and hydrologists discussed the critical situation of Lake Neusiedl, which has lost a lot of its water this year. From 28 - 30 September 2022, participants of a panel discussion and of the scientific meeting explored the current lake situation and discussed "Steppe lakes under climatic change - past, present and future of Lake Neusiedl".
At the research festival in Lower Austria last week, WasserCluster Lunz was represented with two stations. At "What is tea doing in the brook?" you could get information about the metabolic balance of streams. The second station "What happens to leaves in the stream?" explored the connections between biodiversity and stream organisms. We are already looking forward to the next event, where we can get you closer to our research.
Our inter-university center for the study of aquatic ecosystems will be at the Research Festival of Lower Austria on 30 September 22, alongside other 70 research stations at the Palais Niederösterreich, Vienna. Come to marvel, try and discover at our two booths around the topic of brooks starting at 2 pm at Herrengasse 13, in the foyer on the right.
What is tea doing in the brook?
Of course, there is no tea in the brook. But when leaves fall into the water, organic substances dissolve from the leaves in a similar way to tea boiling. These substances promote the growth of bacteria in the stream, which consumes oxygen and produces carbon dioxide. At WasserCluster Lunz, researchers are investigating how this affects the metabolic balance of streams.
What happens to the leaves in the stream?
Huge amounts of leaves enter our streams every year in autumn. But what happens to them? First, they are colonized by fungi and bacteria. Then water-living insect larvae and small crustaceans come and nibble on the leaves. At WasserCluster Lunz, research is being conducted into how all this is connected to the biodiversity of stream organisms.
In September 2022, Laura Coulson from the working group BIGER successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled "Impacts of intermittency on temperate stream biofilms and their role in the carbon cycle." under the supervision of Thomas Hein, and the co-supervision of Gabriele Weigelhofer from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. Christian Griebler and Jakob Schelker were also cooperational partners for ther thesis from the University of Vienna.
Congratulations!
We're grateful for your interest in our research institute's open house program. At this year's two-day open (lab) day, where you listened to scientific lectures and discussed with our research group leaders on Friday evening and were active at our hands-on stations around water chemistry, water music, and aquatic animals on Saturday afternoon, we counted about 200 visitors in total. We are looking forward to presenting our new research results to you next year.
A lot happened again in 2022 in our institute. Read about the following topics in our current newsletter - unfortunately only in German.
- Unsere einjährige Nachhaltigkeitsinitiative
- Laubabbau in Bächen
- Probenahmen in Finnland
- Langzeitforschung Lunzer See
- Portrait unserer zwei neuen Doktorandinnen
- Events, Ausschreibungen und Gratulationen
Program Open House 2022
Our colorful program for this year's - two-day - Open House is set!
Come by on September 2 and 3 to explore aquatic ecosystem research together.
We are looking forward to you (:
In June 2022, Theresa Reichenpfader successfully defended her master thesis entitled "Variability of diel carbon dioxide patterns on small spatial scales in pre-alpine streams" under the supervision of Katrin Attermeyer from the AG CARBOCROBE.
Congratulations!