Oertli Beat
Biodiversity in small ponds in Macun (Swiss national Park): The impact of water level fluctuations during summer
Biodiversité des petits plan d`eau de Macun (Parc national suisse): quel est l`impact des variations hydriques estivales?
Project Number: CH-3414
Research Areas:
Disciplines:
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general biology |
hydrology, limnology, glaciology |
ecology |
Keywords:
Biodiversity, water,
Abstract:
A biological monitoring is underway on the site of Macun since 2005, set up, among others, by the Swiss National Park, the EAWAG and the consulting office Hydra. It includes in particular the followup of the biodiversity of the standing waterbodies and streams. Two diploma theses (Hinden 2004, University of Geneva; Stoll 2005, University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland (EIL explored the biodiversity of 25 ponds, which constituted the baseline study for the setting up of the long term pond monitoring (see Indermuehle & Oertli 2005; Oertli et al. 2007).
The new Diploma thesis proposed here will be conducted in 2007 by Estelle Lecomte (EIL). It projects to explore more closely the hydrology of the small temporary ponds, in order to study the impact of water level fluctuations on the macroinvertebrate communities. As a matter of fact, the water dynamics are likely to be altered through climate warming, which in turn might affect the biotic communities.
With regard to one of the main purposes of the long term monitoring in Macun, namely detecting impacts of global change, the following question will be addressed: do the macroinvertebrate communities differ between temporary and permanent ponds in terms of species richness, density and composition? The answer to this question will allow formulating predictions on the long-term evolution of those communities. The sampling methods will be the same as for the Macun Pond Biodiversity Monitoring (Rüegg 2004, updated by Indermuehle et al. 2006), namely an adapted version of the PLOCH-method (Oertli et al. 2005; Hinden et al. 2005).
Last update: 3/28/18
Source of data: ProClim- Research InfoSystem (1993-2024)
Update the data of project: CH-3414
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