Advanced Freshwater Ecology
2380714 (2 2)3

Catalogue Description

This course aims to introduce the postgraduate students to both advanced therotical and practical aspect of freshwater ecosystems. There will be a interactions of freshwater with land and atmosphere, their origins and evaluation of freshwater animals. The course will cover the interactions of chemical, physical and ecological characteristics of freshwater bodies including plankton, aquatic plants, fish and productivity of the edges and bottoms of lakes, pools and other standing water bodies. Theoretical aspects of these topics will be combined with the field sampling and laboratory analyses.

Text Book

• Ecology of Fresh Waters: Man and Medium, Past to Future.
  1988
  B. Moss
  Blackwell Scientific Publication. (It is available at the Library)
• Selected recent papers on the topics

Reference Books

• Lakes and Ponds by C. Brömark
• Limnoecology, by L. Lampert & S. Sommer
• Selected recent papers will be also used

Objectives

Freshwater bodies are among the most productive, and used and abused ecosystems of the world and no settlement can be far from. Due to increase in the world population, accelerated effect of human activities on freshwater systems has caused major water quality problems and loss of their ecological values. The vital need for the freshwater resources have brought a growing concern to control or slow down the pollution problems of them, and develop restoration measures of already polluted water bodies to stop further water quality deterioration. Considering the current threats that freshwater ecosystems are facing, this course aims to develop a better insight into how the ecosystems function through chain of chemical, physical and ecological interactions, to be able to achieve a wiser use but not abuse and control further loss of them.

Outline

1. On living water
   1. Properties of water (1)
   2. Land and water habitats and the evaluation of organisms (1)
2. The chemical birth of freshwater
   1. Effects of atmospheric gases, acidity of rains and the catchment run-off (1)
   2. Effects of soil vegetation on the chemistry of drainage water and the effect of human activities on the composition of drainage water (1)
3. Upland streams and Rivers
   1. Source of food and energy flow in upland streams (1)
   2. Alteration to upland streams by human activities (1)
4. Lowland Rivers and their flood plains
   1. Submerged plants, methods of measuring the primary productivity of submerged plants and plant bed management in rivers (2)
   2. Further down stream- swamps and floodplains (2)
   3. Drainage and the alterations to floodplain ecosystems including current river pollution problems (2)
5. Lakes, pools and other standing water bodies-some basic features of their productivity
   1. Essential features of parts of lakes (4)
   2. General models of lake production (1)
   3. Eutrophication and acidification (2)
   4. Variation on the theme- other standing water bodies (1)
6. Plankton and fish communities of the open water
   1. Phytoplankton (2)
   2. Zooplankton (2)
   3. Fish in open water community (2)
   4. Functioning of the open water community (2)
7. The edges and Bottom of lakes and their communities
   1. Submerged plant communities in lakes (2)
   2. Competition between submerged plants and phytoplankton (1)
   3. Relationships between the littoral zone and the open water (1)
8. The Birth, development and passing of lakes
   1. Man-made lakes (1)
   2. The development of lake ecosystems and sources of information in sediment (2)
   3. Filling in of shallow lakes: Consensus-natural eutrophication (1)
9. Fresh Waters, the World and the Future (2)

the figures in parenthesis indicate the number of hours that the topics will be covered.