Blog entry by Rémon Saaltink - PhD student

This week, I collected mud from Markermeer-IJmeer for my experiments. In total, I collected 1100 liters of mud and 400 liters of clay. It was hard work but a lot of fun!

The boat left at 7:30 near the “Oranjesluizen” (located in the North of Amsterdam). There are several places in Markermeer-IJmeer where a lot of mud is accumulating. The IJmeer (south of Markermeer, same waterbody) is one of the three mud-hotspots in the lake. Since this mud has the viscosity of low-fat yoghurt, we tried to suck it up first. This didn’t work because the pump sucked up too much water. Therefore, we decided to collect the mud with a large grabber. This also allowed us to see the different layers in the mud. The above 5-8 cm consisted of this low-fat yoghurt-like mud which we collected by scraping of the first 5-8 cm. In total, we could collect ci. 60 L of mud per sample so it took a while before we reached the desired 1100 liters.

Blog entry by Jiefei Mao - PhD candidate

If you are familiar with the water droplets on the green leaves or flower petals, have you seen or imaged when you put a droplet on the soil surface? Sometimes, the droplets do not immediately infiltrate into the soils, instead of that, they can stay several seconds, minutes even hours. This phenomenon is called ‘soil water repellency’ (SWR). Why is it worth doing research on this topic? The reason is that soil water repellency interrupts the water penetration, impacts the water uptake of plants and becomes a potential factor causing soil erosion. The hydrophobic soil organic matters derived from vegetation or microorganisms cause soil water repellency, we defined such components as ‘SWR-markers’. What are those SWR-markers and where do they come from?

Blog entry by Koen Siteur - PhD candidate

Last week, the first year students of the Bachelor study Environmental Sciences went to the island Tiengemeten to do fieldwork. Most of Tiengemeten used to be farmland, however, after the last farmer left the island in 2007 nature has been developing rapidly. The students monitor this development by studying the flora and fauna, the soils, gas emissions from soils and the hydrology.

Blog entry by Lennard Pisa – junior researcher

Copernicus now has honeybees at the Hortus and it was time for their first inspection. They do well in the Hortus with this weather. Linden (Tilia) is blooming in the Uithof and giving a lot of nectar after the rain. The bees turn it quickly into new wax combs and honey stores.

Having institute bees gives interesting research possibilities, from developping and testing measuring systems to using the bees themselves as environmental monitors.  

Blog entry by Myrna de Hoop – PhD student

Land  is essential to support life, ecosystems and food production. Due to population  growth and environmental problems, land is becoming scarce. Especially in drylands, the deterioration in the quality of land is a problem. Dryland systems cover about 40% of the earth surface. Desertification in these areas directly affects about 250 million people. Various factors can cause desertification, such as climatic variations and human activities. My research focuses on rangeland management and the impact on dryland ecosystems. How could we anticipate desertification?

Blog entry by Rémon Saaltink - PhD student

If Cornelis Lely could know that lake Markermeer is still a lake, he'd be turning in his grave! Land reclamation from this lake should have taken place long ago. However, the Dutch government decided to cancel these plans recently after decades of dispute. Having an extra, large fresh water lake is all very well but the current ecological value of the lake is rather poor. Primary productivity in the lake is low as light penetration is reduced due to suspended particles in the water column. Additionally, a fluffy layer at the lakes bed provide poor conditions for (aquatic) plants and other animals such as fish and benthic fauna. You can easily say that Markermeer currently functions as a big aquatic desert. So how did this come about? To answer that, lets first dive briefly into history!