5.10.24
Anne-Muriel Brouet
Lémanscope is a citizen-science initiative to monitor the health of Lake Geneva – 2024 EPFL/Jamani Caillet – CC-BY-SA 4.0
EPFL has teamed up with three organizations – the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), the University of Lausanne (UNIL) and the Association for the Safeguard of Lake Geneva (ASL) – to develop Lémanscope, a citizen-science initiative to monitor the health of Lake Geneva. Today the researchers are calling on volunteers to help collect essential data.
Every lake is a world unto itself. Each has its own ecosystem, dynamics, external factors influencing those dynamics, and complex processes striving for an often fragile equilibrium. Given all this, how is Lake Geneva faring? The truth is, our lake is facing a number of unpredictable threats, yet scientists are struggling to establish a detailed diagnosis because they simply don’t have enough data. That’s where Lémanscope comes in. Spearheaded by EPFL, this initiative is the first of its kind and will call on members of the local community to collect data between now and fall 2025 in a large-scale effort to evaluate the condition of the largest Alpine lake.
While Lake Geneva is in better shape now than in the 1970s, when its ecosystem was suffocating under phosphate-induced eutrophication, it’s still highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, pollution and invasive species – all of which stand to alter its water quality. For instance, there’s been a proliferation of quagga mussels – tiny animals that filter the lake water as they feed – whose long-term impact is unknown. And the full cycle of deepwater renewal, whereby deep lake water rises to the surface and pushes the surface water underneath, carrying oxygen and nutrients with it, hasn’t occurred for 12 years as a result of climate change. There was a glimmer of hope the process would pick back up in early January of this year, but temperatures soon returned to well above their 30-year averages, putting those hopes to rest. “If the lake doesn’t experience complete deepwater renewal for several years, water at the bottom becomes depleted of oxygen and its temperature rises,” says Laurence Glass-Haller, a scientist at EPFL’s Limnology Center. “But we don’t yet know what the long-term consequences will be.”
Color and clarity
Amid so much uncertainty, scientists need concrete facts and real-world measurements they can use to understand and then predict the processes under way. In 2019, a team of local scientists set up the LéXPLORE floating research platform on Lake Geneva, near the Pully shore. There, they’re collecting physical, chemical and optical data at high frequencies, which they’ll subsequently use to develop computer models. “Today, satellites can take optical measurements of the light reflected off a lake as a way of determining water quality,” says Daniel Odermatt, an Eawag scientist and member of the Lémanscope team. “But there’s a lot of uncertainty in these measurements and few surface-level comparative measurements have been taken simultaneously alongside the satellite observations.” This is the gap that Lémanscope’s human researchers will fill, using basic instruments developed back in the 19th century. For example, they’ll use the Forel-Ule color scale to classify the color of the lake water according to 21 hues ranging from deep blue to brown and shades of green (that said, their observations will be recorded using the decidedly more modern EyeOnWater application). And they’ll use what’s known as a Secchi disk to measure water clarity; this is a black-and-white disk that’s lowered into the water until it’s no longer visible, and then the corresponding depth is recorded as a measure of water clarity.
To collect all these data, the Lémanscope team is looking for around 500 “co-researchers” who own a boat (even a small one) to pitch in. They’ll be given a Secchi disk and asked to download the EyeOnWater app. “These volunteers will enable us to build up a large dataset of comparative measurements, which we’ll then use to evaluate the accuracy of satellite data,” says Odermatt. “That should allow scientists to make better use of satellite-image archives spanning several years, providing key insight into long-term processes like global warming and quagga mussel proliferation.”
Building a community
Lémanscope has received funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation through its Agora program. Agora is designed to foster dialogue between scientists and the general public through direct interaction – and joint research – with volunteers. Through Lémanscope, the local community will be able to not only help scientists collect important data, but also share their own impressions of the changes affecting Lake Geneva through interactive talks and events facilitated by lake experts. This kind of citizen science approach paves the way to a better understanding of the issues impacting the lake’s health and enables the design of practical measures to preserve this ecosystem over the long-term.
See the full article here .
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The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne [EPFL-École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne] (CH) is a research institute and university in Lausanne, Switzerland, that specializes in natural sciences and engineering. It is one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, and it has three main missions: education, research and technology transfer.
The QS World University Rankings ranks EPFL(CH) very high, whereas Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranks EPFL(CH) as one of the world’s best schools for Engineering and Technology.
EPFL(CH) is located in the French-speaking part of Switzerland; the sister institution in the German-speaking part of Switzerland is The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zürich [Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich] (CH). Associated with several specialized research institutes, the two universities form The Domain of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH Domain) [ETH-Bereich; Domaine des Écoles Polytechniques Fédérales] (CH) which is directly dependent on the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research. In connection with research and teaching activities, EPFL(CH) operates a nuclear reactor CROCUS; a Tokamak Fusion reactor; a Blue Gene/Q Supercomputer; and P3 bio-hazard facilities.
ETH Zürich, EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne) [École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne](CH), and four associated research institutes form The Domain of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH Domain) [ETH-Bereich; Domaine des Écoles polytechniques fédérales] (CH) with the aim of collaborating on scientific projects.
The roots of modern-day EPFL(CH) can be traced back to the foundation of a private school under the name École Spéciale de Lausanne in 1853 at the initiative of Lois Rivier, a graduate of the École Centrale Paris (FR) and John Gay the then professor and rector of the Académie de Lausanne. At its inception it had only 11 students and the offices were located at Rue du Valentin in Lausanne. In 1869, it became the technical department of the public Académie de Lausanne. When the Académie was reorganized and acquired the status of a university in 1890, the technical faculty changed its name to École d’Ingénieurs de l’Université de Lausanne. In 1946, it was renamed the École polytechnique de l’Université de Lausanne (EPUL). In 1969, the EPUL was separated from the rest of the University of Lausanne and became a federal institute under its current name. EPFL(CH), like ETH Zürich (CH), and it is thus directly controlled by the Swiss federal government. In contrast, all other universities in Switzerland are controlled by their respective cantonal governments. EPFL(CH) has started to develop into the field of life sciences. It absorbed the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) in 2008.
In 1946, there were 360 students. In 1969, EPFL(CH) had 1,400 students and 55 professors. In the past two decades the university has grown rapidly and over 14,000 people study or work on campus, about 10,000 of these being Bachelor, Master or PhD students. The environment at modern day EPFL(CH) is highly international with the school attracting students and researchers from all over the world. More than 125 countries are represented on the campus and the university has two official languages, French and English.
Organization
EPFL is organized into eight schools, themselves formed of institutes that group research units (laboratories or chairs) around common themes:
School of Basic Sciences
Institute of Mathematics
Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering
Institute of Physics
European Centre of Atomic and Molecular Computations
Bernoulli Center
Biomedical Imaging Research Center
Interdisciplinary Center for Electron Microscopy
MPG-EPFL Centre for Molecular Nanosciences and Technology
Swiss Plasma Center
Laboratory of Astrophysics
School of Engineering
Institute of Electrical Engineering
Institute of Mechanical Engineering
Institute of Materials
Institute of Microengineering
Institute of Bioengineering
School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Institute of Architecture
Civil Engineering Institute
Institute of Urban and Regional Sciences
Environmental Engineering Institute
School of Computer and Communication Sciences
Algorithms & Theoretical Computer Science
Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
Computational Biology
Computer Architecture & Integrated Systems
Data Management & Information Retrieval
Graphics & Vision
Human-Computer Interaction
Information & Communication Theory
Networking
Programming Languages & Formal Methods
Security & Cryptography
Signal & Image Processing
Systems
School of Life Sciences
Bachelor-Master Teaching Section in Life Sciences and Technologies
Brain Mind Institute
Institute of Bioengineering
Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research
Global Health Institute
Ten Technology Platforms & Core Facilities (PTECH)
Center for Phenogenomics
NCCR Synaptic Bases of Mental Diseases
College of Management of Technology
Swiss Finance Institute at EPFL
Section of Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship
Institute of Technology and Public Policy
Institute of Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship
Section of Financial Engineering
College of Humanities
Human and social sciences teaching program
EPFL Middle East
Section of Energy Management and Sustainability
In addition to the eight schools there are seven closely related institutions
Swiss Cancer Centre
Center for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM)
Centre for Advanced Modelling Science (CADMOS)
École Cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL)
Campus Biotech
Wyss Center for Bio- and Neuro-engineering
Swiss National Supercomputing Centre