FEST: 'Changes in global inland-water nutrient cycles under anthropogenic impacts'

Friday Earth Sciences Talk by Dr Junjie Wang

Nutrients are essential for all life on the earth. Inland waters not only transport nutrients from land to sea but also function as active biogeochemical reactors. The global nutrient cycling has been accelerating since pre-industrial times due to the increasing population, food production, fertilizer use, intensification and expansion of agricultural land, and wastewater discharge. This has led to rapidly increasing nutrient loading to inland waters. Meanwhile, the construction of dams and reservoirs has doubled the water travel time and thus increased sediment trapping and biogeochemical retention. It remains unclear how global inland-water biogeochemical nutrient cycling has changed due to changing human activities, hydroclimates and other environmental conditions. Moreover, the changed nutrient cycling in inland waters may trigger increased greenhouse gas emissions, aquatic eutrophication problems like harmful algal blooms and hypoxia, and negative effects on the ecosystem and human health. In this talk, we will delve into this important topic together.

With the FEST, we intend to bring the departments of Earth Sciences and Physical Geography together. The aim is to present (mostly) Utrecht-based Earth Sciences in an accessible way, primarily in order to stay familiar with each other’s work across disciplines. Simultaneously, this provides an excellent platform to help (in particular MSc.) students in their orientation on possible graduation specialisations and future careers.