Project properties

Title Effects of effluents from wastewater treatment plants on microbial biofilms and their ecosystem functions
Group Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management Group
Project type internship
Credits 24
Supervisor(s) Miquel Lurling (Miquel.Lurling@wur.nl)
Dr. Patrick Fink, Department of River Ecology (https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=34220) and Department of Aquatic Ecosystem Analysis (https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=34219): patrick.fink@ufz.de
Examiner(s) Miquel Lürling
Contact info Miquel Lurling
Edwin Peeters (edwin.peeters@wur.nl
Begin date 2019/04/01
End date 2019/11/30
Description Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Division of Water Research, in Magdeburg, Germany

A MSc student will work on this project in a streamside mesocosm facility next to a local wastewater treatment plant (WWTP); experiments will be run in flumes fed with stream water from before and after the outlet of the WWTP to examine effects of WWTP effluent on the composition, metabolism and functions of microbial (algal and bacterial) biofilms; community changes will be monitored by a suite of modern methods, including nutrient analyses, confocal laser scanning microscopy, DNA metabarcoding and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) of pigments.
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