Selected publications

Photos or videos on social networks or other kind of internet-based data are emerging tools in biodiversity research and environmental sciences. In this overview article an international team of researchers has collected studies that analyzed how these emerging data sources can be used to optimize monitoring and control of invasive species spread.

The authors used a coupled lake-atmosphere model to investigate the effect of the largest lake of China, the Qinghai, on the weather and climate conditions of the Tibetan Plateau. They found that the lake alters wind conditions and increases precipitation over the arid areas of the earth’s “third pole” Tibet but the effect is irregularly distributed spatially and temporally over the seasons.  

The authors investigated the effects of recent years’ droughts on ecohydrological processes in an agricultural catchment using an isotope-aided model (EcH2O-iso). Stream discharge could be sustained by deep, old groundwater, while transpiration fluxes were heavily reduced by drought stress. Crucially, tracer-based water age estimates can be used as potential indicators of drought impacts.

Climate change causes a decrease in the ice cover on lakes throughout the world. Yet, there has been insufficient research into how this decline of the winter period affects the interplay of phytoplankton and zooplankton. This study shows that even a gradual decline in the average duration of ice cover can result in abrupt changes in plankton dynamics.

67 scientists reviewed 1700 peer-reviewed articles on soil-erosion modelling. The study addresses the relevance of regions, models, and model validation and includes the open-source database. 

Wastewater still contains high amounts of trace organic compounds and organic matter after the wastewater treatment plant. These compounds are usually discharged to rivers with the treated water. The study shows that in the hyporheic zone of the river, i.e. the river sediment, degradation of trace organic compounds takes place simultaneously with a change in the composition of organic matter.

When a species colonizes an urban habitat, differences in the environment can create novel selection pressures. The authors tested for consistent urban selection signals in multiple populations (213 complete genomes) of the burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia), a species that colonized South American cities just a few decades ago.

Female moles not only have ovarian, but also testicular tissue that produces male sex hormones – which lets them diverge from the categorization into two sexes. A team led by Berlin researchers Stefan Mundlos and Darío Lupiáñez describes which genetic modifications contribute to this singular development.