The latest news from Eawag

Forest or farmland: The impact on amphipods in the groundwater is detectable, even if the groundwater extraction site is up to one kilometre away.

Insects and spiders are superfoods: rich in essential fatty acids and therefore an important food supply for birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals.

With climate change, hot and dry summers are becoming more frequent, causing water shortages in some regions of Switzerland. Reusing treated wastewater could help to solve this problem. This has been demonstrated by an Eawag team on behalf of the FOEN and some cantons. The researchers also explain what still needs to be done to put the option into practice.

A new catalogue and database of over 17,000 European river catchments facilitates the work of researchers in the field of hydrology. The EStreams project, carried out at Eawag, provides hydrological and meteorological data as well as information on the landscape of the river regions. The records go back up to 120 years.

Many fish species migrate back and forth between habitats in the course of their lives. However, man-made obstacles make life difficult for these species. Cold-loving fish are also affected by climate change, especially if access to cold-water zones is made more difficult. Renaturalisation can solve this problem. An Eawag project will now help to identify obstacles and remaining cold-water zones so that restoration measures can be planned in a more targeted manner.

The Swiss fisheries advisory office (FIBER) promotes sustainable fisheries through advice and training. It now has a location in French-speaking Switzerland.

Combined sewer overflows following heavy rainfall could be avoided through the use of Blue-Green Infrastructure, such as infiltration basins, retention ponds, and porous pavements.

Members of Eawag's Sandec Department helped organise and participated in the recent Water for Impact (TU Delft) x Eawag Sandec Exchange Day. The aim of the Exchange Day was to enhance mutual understanding of each group’s work, facilitate knowledge exchange, and initiate collaborative efforts for future projects and research.

Aquatic invertebrates are used as bioindicators to evaluate the quality of Swiss watercourses. However, climate change is also leading to changes in the species composition of these organisms. Eawag has now investigated the impacts of increasing temperatures on water body evaluations on behalf of the FOEN. The findings: the indicators are expected to remain relevant at least for the coming decades.

Last week, the 11th International Steven Hoogendijk Award (ISHA) of the “Batavian Society of Experimental Philosophy” was awarded to Eawag researcher and fresh Head of Department Linda Strande.

Last Saturday, numerous visitors flocked to the Eawag and Empa campus in Dübendorf for the Open Day of the two research institutes. Around the Eawag main building, our researchers gave insights into their daily work and at the same time provided information on the pressing issues surrounding water.

Lenny Winkel (*1975), currently Associate Professor at ETH Zurich and Group Leader at the aquatic research institute Eawag, has been appointed as Full Professor of Environmental Inorganic Geochemistry in the Department of Environmental Systems Science by the ETH Board.

For the protection of biodiversity, it is crucial to know the reference genome for as many species as possible.

Monitoring plankton is an important method of controlling water quality. Researchers show how AI could play a role in this in the future (Text in German).

Biodiversity is not a political programme: Only just 1.6 % of all documents searched at federal level make reference to the term. This is one of the many results that the WSL and Eawag institutes have compiled in the joint research initiative ‘Blue-Green Biodiversity’ and which are being presented today at the Special Info Day to an expert audience from administration, politics, research and practice.

Microorganisms in biofilms in rivers can break down harmful substances. Some are also able to degrade biocides, including the insect repellent diethyltoluamide (DEET) - or so it is thought. Researchers at the aquatic research institute Eawag have now discovered that DEET is degraded better when the proportion of treated wastewater in the water is high. They attribute this to specific enzymes that occur primarily where wastewater treatment plants return the water to the aquatic environment. However, the enzymes involved are not straightforward to predict.