News

Do fishing clubs take their responsibility seriously at artificial gravel pit lakes? Researchers compared managed and unmanaged natural lakes as well as managed and unmanaged gravel pit lakes in Lower Saxony and Brandenburg. They found that lakes managed by anglers host similar fish species to unmanaged natural lakes.

Long thought to rely solely on photosynthesis, the microbe Prochlorococcus may get as much as one-third of its carbon through a second strategy: consuming the dissolved remains of other dead microbes.

IGB’s LakeLab in Lake Stechlin, containing “24 lakes within a lake”, is globally unique. This year, the large-scale experimental facility is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Reason enough to look at the past and the future with Mark Gessner, head of the “Plankton and Microbial Ecology” department at Lake Stechlin and initiator of the LakeLab.

A Chinese team, in collaboration with IGB researcher Sabine Hilt, has shown in a large mesocosm experiment how heat waves, nutrients and pesticides promote algae growth and cause aquatic plants to dwindle. This shift in plant types may increase the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions from shallow lakes, as Sabine Hilt and Dutch colleagues demonstrated in another mesocosm experiment.

Biodiversity, ecosystem services and complexity: these keywords are inextricably linked to freshwaters and henceforth form the anchor point of all our research activities. With the beginning of November, IGB has established new programme areas.

IGB researchers have carried out sample fishing in the River Oder to get a better overview of the remaining fish population after the man-made environmental disaster. The results are very sobering.

Whether a lake appears blue or green is also related to its chlorophyll-a content. Researchers led by IGB used satellite data to draw conclusions about the concentrations of the green pigment produced by algae. They showed that 63 percent of the lakes have become greener since 1997. 

How are species richness and the characteristics of running waters related worldwide? This question is being addressed by a team led by IGB scientist Sami Domisch. The researchers have developed the highest-resolution map of the world’s river systems ever produced. The map provides a basis for the detailed analysis of what characterises riverine habitats and how they are interconnected.