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When an endangered species succeeds in repopulating its former habitat, the immediate reaction is one of joy. In the long term, however, its spread is often associated with conflict. One example is the beaver, a keystone species. Other keystone species include the wolf and the bison. These are animals that have an extraordinary impact on the ecosystems in which they live. The reintroduction of such keystone species often restores important processes and ecosystem functions.

Professor Dörthe Tetzlaff was today awarded the highly endowed Water Resources Award of the Rüdiger Kurt Bode Foundation. The prize, which is awarded every three years for outstanding work on the sustainable use of global water resources, honours Tetzlaff's pioneering research on the interactions between climate, land use, water quality and the ecohydrological processes that control water dynamics in landscapes.

To address the growing challenges posed by extreme droughts, researchers are focusing on ecohydrological processes in landscapes. They show that a better understanding of water storage dynamics at medium scales, i.e. areas between 10 and 100 square kilometres, could help to better predict and secure the availability of water resources, even in times of climate change. We spoke to Professor Dörthe Tetzlaff about drought resilience, the hidden water treasures of our landscapes, and more sustainable land and water management.

Die Hydrologin Dörthe Tetzlaff, Leiterin der Abteilung Ökohydrologie und Biogeochemie am Leibniz-Institut für Gewässerökologie und Binnenfischerei (IGB) und Professorin an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin), ist heute mit dem Polubarinova-Kochina Hydrologic Sciences Mid-Career Award ausgezeichnet worden.

A team of scientists collected and analysed water samples at the time. The result, published in Nature Water today, showed that high concentrations of organic micropollutants exacerbated the lethal effects of prymnesin. 

Using long-term monitoring data from 46 German lakes, researchers from IGB have shown that surface temperatures of lakes have risen faster than air temperatures over the last 30 years. Ooxygen concentrations in the deep water have decreased. Modelling suggests that this trend will continue. The good news is that the lack of oxygen in the hypolimnion would be alleviated if the nutrient loads from urban and agricultural discharges could be reduced.

Researchers have compiled and analyzed the key environmental factors that led to the mass development of the brackish water alga Prymnesium parvum in the Oder in the summer of 2022. The data synthesis shows how multiple stressors combined to allow an alga that normally thrives in stagnant salt water to proliferate en masse in a completely atypical habitat. In addition, a study on the quantitative impact on fish stocks in the Oder was published: compared to before the disaster, fish and mussel stocks have been decimated by more than half.

Desiccating salt lakes are an underappreciated source of greenhouse gases that could become even more relevant as a result of climate change. Newly announced research by the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in the USA in cooperation with the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) examining greenhouse gas emissions from the drying lake bed of Great Salt Lake, Utah, calculates that 4.1 million tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were released in 2020.