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Sprawling carpets of floating plants are the result of too many nutrients. However, they could become part of solution strategies, Eawag researchers show.

At Eawag, the aquatic research institute, numerous scientists are conducting research into toilets. In short videos, seven of them explain what fascinates them about the topic and what exactly their research is all about.

A factsheet from the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT) shows: Too much nitrogen and phosphorus is released into the Swiss environment. There they damage biodiversity, forests and water bodies, exacerbate climate change and affect human health. Actually the causes are known.

Researchers Juliane Hollender, Ole Seehausen, Bernhard Truffer and Urs von Gunten from the aquatic research institute Eawag are among the "highly cited researchers 2020".

In the journal ZooKeys, a group of scientists from Eawag and Bern University have described seven whitefish species endemic to the Bernese Oberland lakes – including four not previously described scientifically, two of which have only been identified as distinct species in the last few years. In Switzerland, the whitefish diversity of Lakes Thun and Brienz is possibly matched only by that found in Lake Lucerne; and in deep lakes of this kind further surprises cannot be ruled out.

In agricultural areas, large volumes of water from fields, roads and paths drain directly into streams via manholes and other forms of artificial drainage. These shortcuts also transport pesticides into surface waters – and, according to a new study, in significantly larger quantities than was previously assumed.

When the wind on Lake Biel blows from the south-west and it rains heavily, large quantities of sediment are washed out of the River Aare into the lake. Since the south-west wind also influences the circulation in the lake, the wind direction determines to a large extent where the sediment is deposited in the lake, namely along the eastern shore towards Biel – an important finding for identifying areas at risk of landslides.

The findings of a new measurement campaign on Lake Kivu in Africa show that, contrary to previous assumptions, the methane concentration in the water is relatively stable or increasing only very slowly. Therefore, the risk of a sudden gas eruption from the lake is currently not increasing.

Exploration and utilisation of resources from the world’s oceans is not equally distributed across the globe. Although many of these resources originate in the Global South, they are mostly being researched by just a few countries from the North. Accordingly, this is also where most of the benefits and profits are flowing to, despite the Convention on Biological Diversity. This was the finding of an analysis of literature from the last 50 years.

Whether a lake was once polluted with excess nutrients is reflected even decades later in the community of bacteria living on these nutrients in the sediment. However, there is still surprisingly little research into how microbes in the sediment cooperate.