Physical Limnology

Major threats of the warming climate for aquatic systems include quick changes in the seasonal ice cover and thermal stratification of lakes. The physical limnology at IGB deals with quantification of these changes and estimation of their consequences for aquatic ecosystems by considering the wide spectrum of abiotic processes in lakes. Looking into the transport of mass and energy at turbulent microscales, we extrapolate these on the seasonal heat budget of aquatic systems to estimate their response to climate change and to local anthropogenic impacts. Specific vectors of the research group research activities include lake circulation, turbulence and its effect on transport of particulate matter (phyto- and zooplankton), and on dissolved gases (oxygen, methane and carbon dioxide), physics of ice-covered lakes.