news 2021

Scientists from EPFL and the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography (MIO) have discovered a new source of organic phosphorus that is fertilizing remote marine ecosystems via atmospheric particles. This finding could help researchers better understand how marine ecosystems respond to climate change.

In the "Projet Lac" research project, 35 lakes in the Alpine region were systematically examined for their fish populations for the first time: In Switzerland alone, 106 fish species were detected. With almost 20 percent of all known fish species in Europe, Switzerland is one of the hotspots for fish species diversity.

Biodiversity is now declining at a rate unprecedented in human history, from the local to the global level, threatening not least human well-being. Rapid action is needed, which in turn requires a good understanding of biodiversity. However, a stark division between disciplines and ecosystems in ecological research is hampering holistic solutions, argue the authors of the first synthesis article to emerge from the Blue-Green Biodiversity (BGB) research initiative.

Scientists at EPFL, the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and Wageningen University & Research have developed a new deep-learning model for counting the number of seals in aerial photos that is considerably faster than doing it by hand. With this new method, valuable time and resources could be saved which can be used to further study and protect endangered species.

The COVCO-Basel study by the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) has been investigating the health-related and societal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic for over a year. New results from the study have shown that people coming from low-income households are more severely affected by the pandemic, and that rates of depression among this population group have risen.

Microplastics are everywhere, even in the most remote places. Where do these tiny pieces of plastic come from? Researchers from the University of Basel and the Alfred-Wegener Institute have shown that it takes precise analysis to answer this question. Microplastics are an environmental problem since organisms ingest these tiny particles and can be harmed by them.

An international research team including scientists has found that whenever we encounter ozone, it reacts with lipids in our skin to create nanoparticles. Air pollution is responsible for seven million of premature deaths around the world every year, according to the World Health Organization. That's roughly the same number of people who die from smoking or malnutrition.

An article in the scientific journal "Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society" describes for the first time how the European ICOS network ("Integrated Carbon Observation System") helps to better understand the function of carbon sinks and to assess the effects of climate change on them. Half of the carbon emissions released to the atmosphere by fossil fuel use are re-captured by the ocean and land ecosystems.

Solar energy plays an important role in the fight against climate change as a substitute for fossil fuels. Dye-sensitized solar cells promise to be a low-cost supplement to the photovoltaic systems we know today. Their key feature is the dye sensitizers attached to their surface. Researchers at the University of Basel continue to improve the performance with sensitizers using iron - a commonly available and environmentally friendly metal.

Swiss electricity generation has a very low carbon footprint. However, this is often not the case for imports. Researchers from the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation, led by Empa researcher Loris di Natale, investigated how electric cars could help reduce the need for energy imports from fossil fuels.

In the largest worldwide pricing experiment to date, researchers from the University of Basel, ETH Zurich and ZHAW have demonstrated that road users change their behavior when they must pay for the social and environmental effects of their transportation. The study took place in urban agglomerations in Frenchand German-speaking Switzerland.

For the first time, a new study by Swiss TPH used robust spatio-temporal methodology to show the reduction in air pollution across Europe from 2006-2019 and found that while exposure rates have significantly declined across Europe the past 14 years, there are large parts of the continent where the WHO guidelines on air pollution are still not met.

Changing 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.

Like 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.

Our 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. "Wow, that's so beautiful!" - Children and adults were audibly enthralled by images from the Eawag underwater camera Aquascope during the "Science City 2019 Meeting Point" exhibition at the ETH Zurich.

Whether 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.

When fish ingest microplastics, they often also ingest progesterone. This compound is subsequently released into the digestive tract through chemical reactions with the fish's digestive fluids. That's the key finding of a study carried out jointly by scientists from EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), Peking University in Beijing, and Oklahoma State University, and appearing in Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts.

A UNIGE-led team has studied the fossil rivers of the Egyptian Sahara to reconstruct the region's rainfall rates that led to a major migration of people away from the Nile valley 10,000 years ago. Why did the people living near the Nile river migrate to central Egypt 10,000 years ago, when the Egyptian Sahara was still green? Geologists led by the University of Geneva , Switzerland, have studied the fossil rivers north of Lake Nasser in Egypt in order to reconstruct the palaeo-hydrology of the region and to determine the rainfall rate of this African humid period.

Ocean warming caused by anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions will prompt many species of marine plankton to seek out new habitats, in some cases as a matter of sur-vival. researchers expect many organisms to head to the poles and form new communities - with unforeseeable consequences for marine food webs.

To measure an ecosystem's beauty and the well-being it produces for people can help inform public environmental policy. Scientists at EPFL and Wageningen University in the Netherlands have developed a novel modeling approach for ecosystem assessments based on deep learning and millions of Flickr photos.