News
This page contains latest news regarding the institute. Some entries are only available in German.
Pioneer of ocean thermodynamics: IOW researcher Rainer Feistel receives Fridtjof Nansen Medal
On April 9, 2018, Rainer Feistel, physicist at IOW until 2014, received the Fridtjof Nansen Medal 2018 of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) at its general assembly in Vienna. The EGU, with about 12,500 members Europe's leading association for geoscientists, honoured Feistel's ground-breaking work in the field of ocean thermodynamics. Particularly by defining the thermodynamic properties of seawater by means of a Gibbs function he created for the first time stringent thermodynamic foundations in oceanography, from which other scientific disciplines such as climate research and engineering also benefited significantly.
Lavish blue-green algae: Surprising supply of amino acids for zooplankton
In the international journal Limnology and Oceanography, marine biologist Natalie Loick-Wilde from Rostock reports about a study in the central Baltic Sea in which she and her colleagues from IOW and the US-American Georgia Institute of Technology succeeded in proving that blue-green algae produce an excess of amino acids at a late stage of their bloom. In a typically nutrient-poor season, this leads to a surprising food supply for marine microorganisms and thus for the entire food web.
» Read more … Lavish blue-green algae: Surprising supply of amino acids for zooplankton
Learning from our pollution history: a plea for a proactive approach to tackle microplastics
In a viewpoint paper recently published in the scientific journal “Environmental Science and Technology”, two researchers from IOW argue on why it is reasonable to work towards legislative steps, even though the toxicity potential that microplastics may have on nature environment is still not yet conclusively determined.
New IOW study: Do microplastics harbour additional risks by colonization with harmful bacteria?
The alarming omnipresence of microplastics in rivers, lakes, and oceans increasingly gains the critical focus of research. So far, however, there has been no reliable knowledge as to whether microplastic particles in aquatic ecosystems promote the development of special bacterial communities or even the spread of pathogens. A recent study within the project MikrOMIK* under the lead of IOW has now for the first time systematically investigated whether bacterial biofilms on microplastic particles differ from those on natural materials and how various environmental factors influence the community composition.
Environmental history told by sludge: Global warming lets the dead zones in the Black Sea grow
Geoscientists IOW, the universities of Oldenburg and Hannover as well as Rutgers University (USA) succeeded now in reconstructing the depositional environment of the last interglacial (Eemian, 128,000 years ago) in the Black Sea with unprecedented details. This enabled for the first time a direct comparison between the current oxygen-depleted conditions in the deep water with those during the Eemian when the water temperatures in summer were 3° higher. It shows that the dead zones of the Black Sea will most probably expand by a future global warming, leading to a significant shrinking of the productive zone in the surface water.
Contact persons in all matters of press and public relation at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research are
Dr. Kristin Beck
Tel.: 0381 5197 135
E-Mail: kristin.beck@io-warnemuende.de
Dr. Barbara Hentzsch
Tel.: 0381 5197 102
E-Mail: barbara.hentzsch@io-warnemuende.de
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