Projects
Special Research Fund Professorship in limnogeology Ghent University
A professorship granted by the Special Research Fund is a primarily research-oriented position and is made available for excellent researchers with a high-quality research programme.
Community dynamics of water fleas in East African mountain lakes: integration of (paleo)limnology and (paleo)genetics Ghent University
Cladocera play key roles in aquatic food webs. Understanding the mechanisms that govern
their distribution is therefore invaluable to understand aquatic ecosystem functioning. This is particularly true for the unique tropical cold-water ecosystems on Africa’s highest mountains, which are isolated and show high sensitivity to global change. We will investigate processes shaping the communities and (genetic) diversity of Cladocera in lakes ...
Consequences of an increasing nitrogen: phosphorus ratio for the eutrophication of shallow lakes. KU Leuven
Ensuring a supply of good quality water is one of the major challenges of the coming decades. The páramo ecosystem in the South American Andes supplies freshwater to more than 100 million people. Water from the páramo is used for drinking water, irrigation in agriculture and hydroelectricity production. A high precipitation throughout the year in combination with a low evapotranspiration and high water retention capacity of the Andosol soils ...
Climate and ecological history of the central Sahara: study of a uniquely continous 15,000-year archive Ghent University
,The aim of this project is a paleoecological reconstruction of the environmental history of the central Sahara desert since the last ice age, using fossil remains of aquatic biota preserved in the continous sedimentary record of Lake Yoa in northern Chad. This includesstudies of the taxonomy and biogeography of the midge (Chironomidae) fauna of the Sahara, and of the modern limnology, biodiversity and ecology of aquatic ecosystems in the ...
Interactions between river geomorphology, carbon transport and floodplain carbon sequestration KU Leuven
Sabbatical Steven Bouillon: Biogeochemistry of tropical wetlands KU Leuven
The main goal of this sabbatical is to strengthen and revigorated our key research niche, i.e. studying the biogeochemistry of tropical aquatic systems using state-of-the-art analytical techniques. My research combines a focus on tropical aquatic ecosystems, and the use of stable isotope proxies to study element cycles across a range of ecosystems – from highland streams to rivers, lakes and reservoirs, floodplains, down to the coastal zone. ...
Sabbatical Steven Bouillon: Biogeochemistry of tropical wetlands KU Leuven
The main goal of this sabbatical is to strengthen and revigorated our key research niche, i.e. studying the biogeochemistry of tropical aquatic systems using state-of-the-art analytical techniques. My research combines a focus on tropical aquatic ecosystems, and the use of stable isotope proxies to study element cycles across a range of ecosystems – from highland streams to rivers, lakes and reservoirs, floodplains, down to the coastal zone. ...
Carbon dynamics and greenhouse gas exchange in Papyrus (Cyperus papyrus) wetlands in the Lake Victoria region (Kenya). KU Leuven
Lake Victoria is the worlds’ second largest freshwater lake, covering and area of ~68000 km², and shared by Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. As in many other African freshwater systems, papyrus (Cyperus papyrus) wetlands are abundant along the lake fringes. Although current estimates of their local extent are lacking, these wetlands are thought to occupy 20-85,000 km² across the African continent. These wetlands can be highly productive and build ...
Understanding the influence of land use and catchment characteristics on riverine carbon and nutrient dynamics for improved water resource management in Kenya KU Leuven
River systems are among the world's most threatened ecosystems, facing multiple and often interlinked pressures across different scales. Recent ranking of human stressors to riverine systems indicate that wastewater effluents, agriculture, and urban land use have the strongest effects. In Kenya, with a population of ~53 million people, 15 percent (~8 million people) rely on unimproved water sources, such as ponds, shallow wells and rivers ...