Archive News

February 19, 2018If the climate heats up, the temperature in the uppermost layer of lakes will increase, the thermic layering will become more stable and last longer, and less oxygen will reach the depths – this is the present theory on the effect of climate change on lakes.

February 15, 2018A shower hose will often contain more bacteria than the rest of the building’s plumbing system. A research team led by Frederik Hammes has been investigating this topic for the past four years. In their latest study, they analysed biofilms in 78 shower hoses from 11 countries, and in 21 of them, they detected legionella – a potential pathogen. In this interview, Hammes explains why we should not be unduly concerned.

February 12, 2018Heavy rainfall can cause flash floods in urban areas. While data from flood events is required to model such phenomena, water levels and discharges are not routinely measured above ground. Eawag now plans to make use of widely available images and videos to estimate these values.

February 8, 2018When a person wearing a bright-orange protective suit and carrying a laptop climbs out of a sewer shaft, it could well be an employee of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag). Especially if this happens in Fehraltorf. Since 2016, Eawag has been constructing an internationally unique net of sensors that document water circulation in residential areas.

January 24, 2018A research team from the Surface Waters Research and Management Department is investigating the earliest traces of human life in the tropical Pacific. In July 2017, the team undertook an expedition to Vanuatu in Melanesia. The researchers took sediment cores from the lakes and marshes on seven islands in order to test these for indications of the earliest human activities.

January 17, 2018How much thermal energy from Swiss lakes can be exploited without having an impact on their ecosystems? Eawag was commissioned by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) to estimate the potentials with the larger lakes and rivers.

December 18, 2017River invertebrates react the same way to decreasing glacier cover wherever in the world they are, say scientists who have evaluated more than one million of them in diverse regions with shrinking glaciers, to determine the impact of global environmental change. Their findings are published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

December 14, 2017At its meeting on 13 and 14 December 2017, the ETH Board appointed Dr. Kai Udert as Titular Professor of ETH Zurich. Kai Udert works at Eawag since 2006 and is currently group leader within the Department Process Engineering and lecturer at ETH Zurich. His main research focus is on new technologies for resource recovery from wastewater.

December 13, 2017The EPFL has launched a new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in collaboration with Eawag’s Sandec department and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The course is designed to shed light on the important role played by Public Health Engineers at times of humanitarian crisis, and how health risks can be mitigated.

December 11, 2017The composition of cyanobacterial communities in peri-alpine lakes has become increasingly similar over the past century. Climate warming and a period of eutrophication have favoured in particular potentially toxic species which can adapt rapidly to environmental changes. These are the findings of an Eawag-led study analysing DNA extracted from sediment cores.