Aquatic Botany and Microbial Ecology Research Group

The research group investigates the effect of external and internal nutrient loading on trophic state and nutrient cycling in the continental standing waters, especially regard to the primary production and decomposition trophic levels. The group analyses the bacterial and alga production, the light and nutrition limitation of primary production, as well as the trophic state and ecological quality of standing waters by remote sensing control techniques. The group works on the long-term monitoring of phytoplankton in the Lake Balaton, as well as maintains an isolated algal culture collection from Lake Balaton and other standing waters as a reference for classical and molecular taxonomic investigations. The group studies the distribution, production and ecophysiology of emergent and submerged macrophytes, by means of various methods e.g. physiology, genetics and remote sensing control etc. The group especially carry out exploratory limnological research of extreme and unique standing waters (e.g. soda and saline lakes) in Eurasian scope. These fundamental limnological research includes investigation of role of waterbird population in the nutrient cycling, energy flow and trophic relationships. In the frame of national and international collaboration, the research group also works on ecosystem services survey projects of Eurasian waters by our fundamental limnological databases and diverse expertise.