All that are working with the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) are familiar with the quality elements used as indicators to assess the ecological status of water bodies. But does that mean that we know what the best indicators are? In a new paper, Finnish BIOWATER colleagues have tested the use of fungi as indicators of ecological status. Fungi are

BIOWATER is proud to announce that our former PhD student, now post doc, Mette Vodder Carstensen, is one of five talented researchers that received Aarhus University Research Foundation’s PhD Award for 2020. We can only say, well deserved, Mette! The assessment criteria of the Aarhus University PhD programme include the excellent quality of the thesis and the general efforts of

Can trees along agricultural headwater streams improve the aquatic ecology and habitat quality? This question was asked by four scientists from Finnish and Canadian institutes. And their answer is: Yes, they can! The authors set out to study the effects on ecology of riparian land use. To do this, they studied 11 paired forested and open agricultural headwater stream reaches.

As pointed out earlier in our BIOWATER pages, there is a lack of systematic data on the impacts of forestry on water resources. We are therefore proud to present the work of PhD student Maria Rajakallio (University of Oulu, Finland) and her co-authors: They recently published new data on how forestry and drainage may impact aquatic ecology in a paper

Brownification of waters is a threat to aquatic ecosystems over large areas in Europe. A new paper links increasing concentrations of dissolved organic carbon to climate, deposition, and land-use, and the complex interactions between them. The authors studied 12 small forested headwater catchments in Finland, with monitoring records from 1990 to 2019. The catchments had a large gradient of climate

“The ambition to use forestry as a climate mitigation measure should take into consideration the potential effects of forestry management methods on soil and surface water quality, in particular in acid-sensitive areas such as southern Norway.” This is the main message of a new paper titled “Intensified forestry as a climate mitigation measure alters surface water quality in low intensity

Can land-use-specific export coefficients be used together with satellite images (Landsat) and/or regional land-use statistics to estimate loads and concentrations of total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and suspended solids? This question was raised by the authors of a new publication in Science of the Total Environment. Main author is Biowater’s PhD student Joy Bhattacharjee. The study area was the Simojoki catchment

How can we reconstruct the history of drainage and land use in a catchment? This question is important if we are to understand historical hydrological data in peatlands. PhD student Joy Bhattacharjee (University of Oulu) and co-authors have used a combination of historical aerial photos and LIDAR data to study this. The objectives were to develop techniques to map the

Dr. Mette Vodder Carstensen is the second PhD-student associated with BIOWATER that has achieved a PhD, and the first that is funded by NordForsk. Mette studied at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and held her dissertation in December 2020. The final, formal approval was given at the end of February 2021, and now we are proud to present her work.