Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics
Since September, we welcome in our group Dr Santona Khatun. Santona obtained the Dean’s post-doctoral fellowship for her project on the origin of the metalimnetic methane in Lake Geneva. She is working in both the Lakes’ group and Prof. Berg’s group. She came a long way, over from Bangladesh but she started field work as soon as arrived in Switzerland. Check her profile!
Have a look there and contact us if interested
Jake Vander Zander, Director of the Center for Limnology, and Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of Wisconsin, has started a one-year sabbatical in the LAKES group. Jake works on freshwater ecosystems with a strong focus on invasive aquatic species and sustainable management of fisheries. Check his lab here.
Jake is also a cross-country skier and marathon runner.
as part of the editorial from a special issue in OIKOS on nutritional quality, we mapped all ecological questions that dealt with nutritional quality over the past 20 years.
Paper led by Nicolas just accepted in Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.
Some lake waters can transiently and suddenly turn to a bright turquoise coloration, which results from the formation of fine particles of calcium carbonate (basically chalk) at their surface during so-called whiting events. While the primary mechanism operating in whiting events, i.e. calcium carbonate precipitation, is known, current knowledge does not explain well their timing, nor their patchy spatial distribution in large lakes. Herein we combined both large (from satellite data), medium- and small-scale observations, along with modelling, to investigate a whiting event in the largest lake of Western Europe, Lake Geneva. We show that this whiting event is a compound phenomenon whose timing is determined by a conjunction of specific thermal and geochemical conditions in both the river and lake waters. The spatial extent of the whiting depends on the lake water circulation, with a greater extension as the lake is more stratified. Our study gives supporting evidence to the tight coupling existing between lakes and their catchments and underscores an overlooked role of river-lake transition zones as important biogeochemical reactors.
Escoffier, N. , Perolo, P., Lambert, T., Rüegg, J., Odermatt, D., Adatte, T., Vennemann, T., Perga M.E. (in press). Whiting events in a large peri-alpine lake: Evidence of a catchment-scale process. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.