MANTEL: water quality after extreme weather

MANTEL is a new European network that trains young researchers to investigate the effects on water quality of extreme weather events. Two PhD students will be trained at NIOO, under supervision from Lisette de Senerpont Domis.

MANTEL's full title is Management of Climatic Extreme Events in Lakes and Reservoirs for the protection of ecosystem services.

Extreme weather events such as storms and heatwaves are becoming more frequent. This trend, which is clearly visible in the Netherlands, has been linked to climate change and is projected to continue.

Measures

The effects of such events are generally longer lasting than the duration of the event itself: months or years, rather than just hours.

Rising water temperatures during a heatwave may lead to the formation of toxic cyanobacterial blooms, while storms with high rainfall are associated with the in-flow of large loads of dissolved organic matter (DOM).

This has a negative impact on the ecosystem services such as the provision of safe water for drinking and irrigation, recreational use, and economic benefits such as fisheries and tourism. Restoration measures can lead to substantial costs for water managers.

Resilience

An effective set of physical measures is not the only precondition for success. Social aspects such as access to the lake, legal restrictions for entrepreneurs, and division of costs and benefits for stakeholders, play an equally important role.

A relatively non-intrusive approach would be to lower the trophic status of surface waters to increase their resilience against predicted global warming, reducing problematic cyanobacterial blooms.

An interesting hypothesis is that such 'rehabilitated' waters are not only more resilient to increased water temperatures, but also to pulsed inflows of nutrients.

Limnotron

At NIOO, Lisette de Senerpont Domis (Aquatic Ecology, AKWA) will supervise two PhDs focusing on quantifying the management implications of extreme weather events.

In one project, they will do this by conducting experiments in highly controlled indoor mesocosms – so called 'Limnotrons' – where treated (rehabilitated) and non-treated water is exposed to different temperatures, and by studying data from two areas in the Netherlands where rehabilitation projects are ongoing.

In another project, the benefits of increasing the resilience of three study systems will be determined after an inventory of the key determining social design factors that determine the success (in terms societal of benefits) of lake restorations.

Horizon 2020

Funding for these projects and a number of others is provided by the Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions (MSCA) in the EU's Horizon 2020 research & innovation programme.

Other beneficiaries in the MANTEL-consortium include the Dundalk Institute of Technology (Ireland), the University of Uppsala (Sweden) and ICRA, the Catalan Institute for Water Research (Spain).

Partners in the Netherlands are the BrabantseDelta waterboard, Wageningen UR and the engineering firm for Witteveen + Bos.
 

• PhD students with the right qualifications who are interested in these projects are still welcome to apply through the NIOO-website.