Single Review on past events

For a limnologist like Karsten Rinke living and working in Konstanz seems like paradise, as not only the lake is so close, but also the Limnological Institute of the University of Konstanz is situated directly on the seaside. Nevertheless Karsten Rinke decided to move to Magdeburg three years ago to work as Head of the Department of Lake Research at the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research. But he still is a Fellow of the Zukunftskolleg and works on the DFG-funded project “Climate effects on ecosystem dynamics of Lake Constance”. To analyze these effects (e.g. changing air temperatures and its consequences for biomass), he collaborates with climatologists and meteorologists. He applies coupled hydrodynamic-ecological models that contain a hydrodynamic compartment that is directly forced by meteorological data and include an ecological model accounting for the complexity of the relevant ecological processes.

Since Magdeburg has no lake Karsten Rinke and his colleagues do their research on artificial lakes, such as reservoirs. His team is highly interdisciplinary and consists of biologists, chemists, physicists and geologists. They are interested in the restoration of lakes and mining lakes, reservoir management, water quality monitoring and modelling of lakes and reservoirs. One of these reservoirs they work at is the Rappbode Reservoir Observatory which is located in the Harz Mountains in Germany. It consists of one main reservoir and three pre-dams. With a surface area of 395 hectare it supplies more than one million people with drinking water. Karsten Rinke´s team continuously monitors the water quality and ecosystem dynamics, such as Phytoplankton dynamics, as well as nutrient and carbon fluxes.

Karsten Rinke concluded his talk by comparing his current position at the Department of Lake Research with being a Fellow of the Zukunftskolleg: In Konstanz he enjoyed the extremely high independence in his own scientific work, but on the other hand he thinks that teaching should be higher valued and seen as an important component of career development. In Magdeburg the administrative load increased considerably, but being the boss of well-established scientists in other fields of expertise is a high appreciation.