The scientific article entitled “Impacts of multiple stressors on freshwater biota across spatial scales and ecosystems,” co-authored by Prof. Dr. Meryem Beklioğlu from METU Department of Biological Sciences and Ecosystem Research Center, her graduate students Tuba Bucak (Ph.D.) and Uğur Işkın (MSc) together with Prof. Dr. Erik Jeppesen who is carrying out research at METU with Prof. Dr. Beklioğlu within Tubitak 2232 program, is published in “NATURE Ecology & Evolution”.
Beklioğlu, Jeppesen, and the team are among the partners of the “Managing Aquatic Ecosystems and Water Resources under Multiple Stress (MARS) project, which included 24 research centers from 17 countries across Europe including METU, Turkey, within the scope of the EU 7th Framework Program. Based on the findings of the project carried out between 2014 and 2018, the team conducted comprehensive research to synthesize many scientific studies on European freshwater and identify how, when, and where multiple stressors interact with biota in lakes and rivers. Among the findings of the article, which consisted of 33 in-situ mesocosm experiments, 14 river basins, and 22 regional and continental studies to produce 174 sets of paired stressors such as pollution of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus), drought, hysrological alterations, the effects of nutrients pollution on biota in lakes are even higher when interacting with other factors such as global warming or changes in hydrology. Although less singular, strong effects of eutrophication are also seen in flowing waters, where animals are more sensitive to a wide range of other stressors than are photosynthetic organisms.
To reach the article published with open access policy: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1216-4.
