Selected publications

The authors used 48 mesocosms to test how nutrient loading, continuous warming, heat waves and glyphosate-based herbicides interactively impact the growth of submerged macrophytes, phytoplankton and periphyton. Heat waves facilitated phytoplankton growth under combined nutrient loading and glyphosate treatments more than continuous warming. Macrophyte biomass was lowest under these conditions.

Phosphorus as scare raw material can be recovered from municipal wastewater treatment as iron phosphate mineral vivianite. Vivianite formation increased with higher iron and lower sulphur content. The study suggests that the use of sulphur-free precipitants for chemical P elimination may enhance vivianite formation. The new insights are also of high relevance for the research on aquatic sediments.

The authors investigated the influence of microbial processes on the fate of trace organic compounds in stream sediments. The study demonstrates the usefulness of the fluorescent tracer system resazurin-resorufin for determining microbial metabolism and disentangling specific reactive properties and ultimately their influence on the fate of contaminants in natural hyporheic zones.

Scientists integrated data about natural chemical compounds and the organisms they have been documented in, provided literature references and exposed the information both as a stand-alone database and via Wikidata.The database enables queries that relate natural chemical compounds to the taxa they have been found in and the literature documenting the evidence.

The spatial and temporal variability of stable water isotopes were investigated in the Schlei and in the Baltic Sea boddens. The data improve the understanding of hydrological processes behind those dynamics. Further they will be a helpful contribution to multiple IGB projects, e.g. in context of migration studies of pike and analysis of biochemical processes in macrophytes

Understanding organizational principles of hyporheic exchange flow and biogeochemical cycling in landscapes is key for generalizing process knowledge.

The authors developed indices to quantify the urban affinity of species by using publicly available occurrence data and examined the performance of these indices using a global dataset of bats. The results show that simple indices are appropriate and most practical for producing quantitative assessments of species’ urban affinity.

The authors analysed several hundred proteins of a broad diversity of fungal species in order to untangle the early diversification of fungi. Thorough curation of the phylogenomic data set and usage of cutting-edge methods enabled them to resolve long-standing contested relationships among different phyla.