Environment

An Eawag researcher has helped to develop a new approach to tracking how river water enters the groundwater. In the test area within the Emmental, the flow time within the aquifer has been shown to be much shorter than previously assumed. This has potential consequences during dry spells.

Where plant diversity decreases, the diversity of insect life, and therefore biodiversity as a whole, also decline. For example, specialist insects that rely on a few plant species are absent from intensively managed meadows and pastures and dark beech forests because their food plants are no longer to be found there. This is the finding of an international study coordinated by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL).

The last ice age, about 20,000 years ago, was significantly colder than previously thought. This is shown for the first time by systematically analysed samples of groundwater collected around the globe and the inert gases dissolved in it. Swiss groundwater from Uster (ZH) also contributed to the results.

In the Alps, it is getting warmer and warmer and spring is starting earlier and earlier. Many species living there can adapt their behaviour as well as their choice of habitat accordingly. But as it is shown in an overview study led by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and the CNRS in France, which also includes numerous results from citizen science projects, these adaptations usually do not take place quickly enough.

Biodiversity on Earth is declining dramatically. Eawag has always had a great tradition of supporting research on biodiversity. With modern research approaches and a highly interdisciplinary environment, which is almost the only one of its kind worldwide, it also wants to contribute to ensuring that politics, economy and society have the necessary foundations to understand and preserve biodiversity.

EPFL scientists are beginning to understand why corals in the Gulf of Aqaba, along with their symbiotic algae and bacteria, resist higher temperatures particularly well.