Press Releases
IOW researcher Maren Voß will be the first Björn Carlson Baltic Sea Prize laureate
The Björn Carlson Baltic Sea Prize of the Swedish Björn Carlson Baltic Sea Foundation, which will be awarded for the first time this year, goes to Prof. Maren Voß from the IOW. She is being honoured for her groundbreaking research on the importance of nitrogen in marine cycles and particularly its role in the overfertilisation of the Baltic Sea. The prize, endowed with 3 million Swedish kronor, will be awarded in Stockholm on June 3, 2022.
» Read more … IOW researcher Maren Voß will be the first Björn Carlson Baltic Sea Prize laureate
What happens to the nutrient cycle when typhoons churn the sea: Insights from the eye of the storm
In September 2018, an expedition as part of the German-Chinese project MEGAPOL was affected by the super typhoon “Mangkhut”. This resulted in the collection of unique data sets on the nutrient budget in the impacted part of the South China Sea. Enormous amounts of nutrients were mixed into the surface water from deeper layers, where they tripled the growth of phytoplankton in a few weeks.
Looking beneath the surface of the changing oceans: IOW supports successful deployment of new Argo Float sensors
As part of the DArgo2025 project, Germany’s Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency coordinated the successful validation and deployment of new sensors on automated drifting buoys, so-called Argo floats. These sensors can now be deployed worldwide. In this context, the IOW evaluated novel nutrient sensors that were tested in the Baltic Sea. The project, which ended in December 2021, was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
„Indecent“ witnesses: Using faecal lipids to reconstruct human population growth in the Baltic Sea region
What rivers carry into the Baltic Sea usually ends up in one of its deep basins. Geologists find so-called proxies in these deposits – evidence they use to reconstruct earlier environmental conditions. In a recently published study , Jérôme Kaiser from the IOW and Mathias Lerch from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research show that population development and wastewater history in the Baltic Sea region can also be reconstructed in this way – with the help of the remains of faeces!
Confirmed: If sewage sludge is applied to fields, microplastics can get into deeper soil layers and onto adjacent areas
The fact that sewage sludge from municipal waste water treatment plants contains a high proportion of microplastics has already been shown in earlier studies. It was suspected that the use of such sludge for fertilising fields could also promote the uncontrolled input of microplastics into the wider environment. Now, studies conducted as part of the project MicroCatch_Balt funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research confirm this assumption.
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