Archive News

November 12, 2021A new EU project is building bridges between experts from academia and industry in the field of urban drainage. The aim of the project is primarily to make local research infrastructure available to partners throughout the EU – including Eawag's urban water observatory (UWO) in Fehraltorf.

November 9, 2021This year’s Global Science Film Festival (GSFF) will be taking place in Zurich and Bern between 19th and 28th November. Alongside the full-length and short films by international film makers, shorts by Swiss scientists are also showcased at the event. Five researchers from Eawag are taking part in the festival with their respective submissions.

November 8, 2021A new special publication is dedicated to the American scientist Jim Morgan, whose work in the field of aquatic chemistry also left its mark on Eawag.

November 4, 2021Changing temperatures and varying winds over the seasons cause great fluctuations in Lake Geneva. The LéXPLORE research platform monitored the movement of water within the lake for a year to learn more about how natural factors influence the lake’s mixing. The resulting analysis now paints a fuller picture of mixing in large lakes, which had previously only been studied over shorter time periods.

November 3, 2021Like many land plants, seagrasses live in symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen and Eawag now show that seagrass in the Mediterranean Sea lives in symbiosis with bacteria that reside in their roots and provide the nitrogen necessary for growth. Such symbioses were previously only known from land plants. The study was published in the journal Nature.

November 2, 2021Our lakes, rivers and streams are teeming with the smallest creatures, plants and bacteria that are barely visible to the naked eye, if at all. An underwater camera makes it possible to observe and identify the species of these creatures in real time.

October 29, 2021Whether a hydroelectric power plant is built, a pesticide is banned or a moor is placed under protection – a wide variety of political decisions have an impact on biodiversity. But does biodiversity play any role at all in such decisions? Researchers at Eawag and WSL have investigated this question and examined Swiss policy over the past 20 years.

October 26, 2021Microplastics, owing to their chemical properties, can carry micropollutants into a fish’s digestive system where they are subsequently released through the action of its gastric and intestinal fluids. Scientists of EPFL and Eawag, working in association with other research institutes, have studied this process by looking specifically at progesterone – often pointed to as an endocrine disrupter.

October 18, 2021The environmental chemist Barbara F. Günthardt and the two environmental engineers Matthew Moy de Vitry and Marius Neamtu are awarded the ETH Medal for their doctoral theses. Plant toxins, urban flooding and complicated flows were the topics. Congratulations!

October 14, 2021Heatwaves and heavy local rainfall will increase with climate change, pushing traditional urban drainage systems to their limits. These problems can be addressed using the blue-green infrastructure approach. With careful planning, solutions of this kind can also increase biodiversity and improve the quality of urban life.