Archive News

March 8, 2018Eawag scientist Lenny Winkel was appointed as Associate Professor of Environmental Inorganic Geochemistry by the ETH board. Lenny Winkel leads the group Environmental Inorganic Geochemistry within the Department Water Resources and Drinking Water and is until today Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich.

March 7, 2018In 2017, 68 cities (mostly in Europe) again took part in a large-scale project measuring drug levels in wastewater. The results for 2017 were published today by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). 

March 5, 2018River networks are dendritic and have a physical direction. The influence of these spatial preconditions on the dispersal of species and the dynamics within metacommunities has been the focus of research for a number of years. 

February 22, 2018The earth’s water supply is changing because of global warming: the ratio of precipitation to evaporation is sinking, and additional arid zones may emerge. The speed at which this development is likely to take place has been analysed by an international team including Eawag researchers. 

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.