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In order to characterise a lake comprehensively, it is also necessary to understand the material flows. Dr. Alexander Frank from the GeoZentrum Nordbayern at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg is particularly interested in oxygen fluxes.

A number of scientists from Spain, Australia, England and the USA, whose special interest lies in remote sensing, have joined the limnologists permanently working at the LakeLab for an experiment.

Aquatic ecosystems suffer disproportionately from anthropogenic pressure and the effects of climate change. According to the EU Water Framework Directive, lakes along river systems in particular are currently in poor ecological condition. How similar are lakes that are more or less strongly connected by rivers and how do algal blooms spread along lake chains? These and other questions are being investigated by an IGB research team led by Stella Berger and Sabine Wollrab together with other partners from remote sensing and landscape ecology.

How can you make lakes and the worlds largely hidden within them experienceable? "Artists in Residence" of IGB will be filming at Lake Stechlin in June.

As if they had arranged to meet, a television team and a radio reporter, both from rbb, visited the LakeLab today. The team around Boris Römer filmed a video for the evening television series zibb - Zuhause in Berlin & Brandenburg (At home in Berlin & Brandenburg) and Bernd Dreiocker recorded the original sounds for a feature on rbb kulturradio.

How do the conditions set in this year's LakeLab experiment, i.e. skyglow and brownification, affect macrophytes and periphytons? This question is investigated by Ivana Trbojević from the University of Belgrade. The Serbian researcher spends a good four weeks at Lake Stechlin to strengthen the LakeLab team.

Ulrike Berninger, Professor of Ecology at the University of Salzburg in Austria, has long been interested in mixotrophic plankton. This refers to the small organisms floating in water that combine the properties of both zooplankton and phytoplankton. Depending on the environmental situation or individual requirements, these unicellular organisms can either take up food particles via phagocytosis or carry out photosynthesis using sunlight.

As energy supplier and stimulus of the internal clock, light is of fundamental importance to plants and animals. This also applies to fish and microscopic organisms in lakes. Like other species, they have adapted to the day-night rhythm during evolution. But what happens if a lake is illuminated by artificial lighting at night, or if not enough light penetrates into the water during the day? These questions are examined during this year's summer experiment at the Lake Lab.