BIodiversity and BioGEochemistry of Riverine landscapes
BIGER on Bluesky
Biger in the News
Participants improved cooperation, exchanged updates, and honed the project’s course for the upcoming stages. The conversations were actively participated in by our team, which included Johannes Luca Kowal, Dr. Ronald Pöppl, Prof. Thomas Hein, and Dr. Sonia Steffany Recinos Brizuela.
DANSER aims to address the impacts of human activity and climate change on river systems, restore sediment balance, and enhance water quality.
Celebrating UNESCO’s Water Science Legacy
On June 12, our team member, Dr. Paul Meulenbroek, had the honour of participating in an event marking the 50th anniversary of the Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (IHP) and 60 years of UNESCO’s commitment to water sciences.
The event took place in Paris, where Dr. Meulenbroek contributed as an expert speaker during the side event „Joint Danube Survey 5 – Science, Society, and the Invisible in the River: Bringing Science to Citizens.“
His talk, titled “Biodiversity in a Drop: Monitoring Nature with eDNA,” focused on the innovative use of environmental DNA (eDNA) in tracking and preserving aquatic biodiversity.
#MERI
New Scientific Paper Published
A new Open Access article has been published in the Journal of Environmental Management, titled:
„Assessing Land Use Changes and Agricultural Practices in Highland Valley-Bottom Wetlands in the Taita Hills, Kenya“
by Sharon Gubamwoyo, Thomas Hein, Janne Heiskanen, Damaris Guranya Kisha, Petri Pellikka, Georg Gruber, Victor Apondi Omondi, Sonja Maria Leitner, Gabriele Weigelhofer, James Mwang’ombe Mwamodenyi, Amose Ouko Obonyo, and Gretchen Maria Gettel.
To read the full article online, please click here:
14thInternational Symposium on Biogeochemistry of Wetlands and Aquatic Systems
(Baton Rouge, LA, USA)
Our working group actively participated in the inspiring BioGeo 2025 symposium, engaging with the application of biogeochemical principles to address environmental and societal challenges across diverse systems.
This year’s theme highlighted the critical role of coastal zones—where freshwater from rivers and lakes meets estuarine and coastal ocean waters. Changes in runoff timing and discharge volume in these zones can lead to significant shifts in key drivers of biogeochemical cycling, including temperature, salinity, nutrient availability, sediment transport, and contaminant loads.
Our PhD student, Flavia Byekwaso, contributed to the symposium by presenting her work on urban tropical wetlands.
The EGU General Assembly 2025 was held in Vienna, Austria, from 27 April to 2 May.
During this week-long event, our team presented their achievements. Topics covered during the poster sessions included ecosystem dynamics, sediment transport in the Danube River and its tributaries, and the human impact on tropical urban rivers and wetlands. Our team also delivered oral presentations on topics such as floodplain connectivity, biogeochemical dynamics, and greenhouse gas emissions from tropical, groundwater-fed springs. We also gave a presentation on the drivers of stream metabolism in human-impacted mountain streams in Uganda.
Congratulations to our incredible team on these excellent presentations! Keep up the fantastic work!
