News

Scientists from IGB present long-term monitoring data on water quality of Lake Stechlin in the journal Scientific Data. The team makes this data available to other researchers via IGB's data platform FRED.

Some organisms can slow their development to withstand wind and weather. This strategy is found in plants, animals, and even microorganisms, both on land and in water.

Too little rain, too little water in the landscape – so simple, so serious. Even if the drought is obvious because freshwaters carry less water, plants wither and the soil becomes brittle and cracked, the drying out itself is a complex process in which the spatial context plays an important role. Professor Dörthe Tetzlaff from the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) is investigating this interplay of environmental factors, water storage and water flows in the landscape, focussing on the Berlin-Brandenburg region.

Experiments are an essential part of the scientific process – and ecology is no exception. A new publication in the journal Nature Communications, looks at the challenges experimental ecology faces in predicting and mitigating the effects of global change. And it points to new approaches for research.

Promoting scientific progress as a top priority. This is how Mark Gessner outlines the core mission of the Society for Freshwater Science, the world's most important professional society for river ecology today. Equally important, however, particularly in these disturbing times for science policy, is to highlight the relevance of freshwater research for intelligent water resource management and to communicate the importance of freshwater to the broader public.

The World Meteorological Organisation's (WMO) latest report on the state of the world's climate shows that global warming is accelerating, with a particularly sharp increase in 2024 – and with far-reaching and in some cases irreversible consequences for our inland waters. Rising temperatures and changing water levels are driving new ecological dynamics: oxygen-free zones are expanding in lakes, the composition of species communities is changing and animals are adapting their behaviour – often struggling to obtain sufficient food.

A team with Dagmar Frisch has tested a simple and inexpensive method for detecting damaged DNA in permanent eggs of water fleas. This method could also be used for other natural bioarchives.