The latest news from Eawag

Professor Bernhard Truffer of the Eawag Water Research Institute is among the "highly cited researchers 2024".

During ETH Day on 16 November 2024, environmental engineer Valentin Faust was awarded the Otto-Jaag Water Protection Prize for his doctoral thesis. His work provides important insights about the production of fertiliser from human urine.

The 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 11 to 22 November 2024. The Aquatic Research Institute Eawag is organising three thematic panel discussions on the topic of ‘Swiss innovations for global climate action’ together with the Institute of Environmental Sciences at the University of Geneva.

Every year, the Hydrobiology Limnology Foundation for Water Research issues an award for dissertations and master theses on limnology. This year, the prize for the dissertation and master thesis went to researchers at the aquatic research institute Eawag.  

A nuclear waste storage facility needs to be secure, even if glaciers were to churn down from the Alps into the midlands in a distant future. This is why Nagra arranged for a study of the sediments that had been deposited in former, deep glacial lakes. The layers are around 600,000 years old, making them much older than the last ice age, which was around 24,000 years ago. Good news for Nagra: it seems that the layers of stone lying beneath have not been eroded by ice since that time.

The European Research Council is supporting the MEMELAND research project of a European research team with over 13.5 million euros. Nathalie Dubois from Eawag is a member of the group. The aim is to provide a new narrative for European environmental history, offering decisive insights for sustainable agriculture and climate protection in Europe.

A new publication by Eawag shows that co-cultures of different microalgae are more resistant to pests than monocultures.

On 1 September 2024, Linda Strande took up her new position as Head of Department at Sandec. She succeeds Christoph Lüthi.

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

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.