IP Freshwaters – Annual Retreat

27 Aug 2025, 10:30 → 28 Aug 2025, 14:30 Europe/Berlin

Villa Böckelmann

Jan Fleckenstein, Markus Weitere, Ilona Baerlund

IP Freshwaters - Annual Retreat 2025

We cordially invite all scientists and PhD students working within the Integration Platform (IP) Freshwaters to the Annual Retreat 2025.

The Meeting will take place at Villa Böckelmann, Magdeburg-Otterleben from 27.-28. August 2025.

For more information on IP Freshwaters please see here: https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=48617.

Building on the formats of our previous IP workshops in Barby 2022, Ottersleben 2023 and UFZ-KUBUS 2024, we once again would like to engage with you in discussions on our research within the Research Unit Water and Environment and across the RUs. The workshop will provide an opportunity to connect and synthesise some of our exciting research and outreach along multi-disciplinary lines. This especially to further strengthen and expand our collaborations and fine-tune our research portfolio in the light of the feedback from the evaluation in February 2025 and to discuss plans for the next POF period. Besides the interesting scientific discussions there will be ample room to also socialise and have a good time together.

The aim of the IP Workshop is to: 

• Inform and be informed – current achievements in the IP 
• Post-processing the UFZ scientific evaluation in February 2025 - status quo and next steps towards POF V
  
• Support alignment of own work towards common goals of Platform Projects / Integration Platform / UFZ
• Maintain the exchange across Departments and RUs
• Bring in a view from / to the outside - lecture by and discussion with an external guest 
• "BBQ"

We are especially looking forward to your posters – new or recycled – for the session in the afternoon of Day 1. You can register the posters together with your personal registration. Following the feedback from the last workshop, we have reserved time for a round of poster pitches in plenary.

A binding registration is required to assess the need for chairs, poster boards, beds and litres of coffee. We kindly ask you to register for the workshop until August, 13rd, 2025. A successful registration is confirmed by an automatic email reply.

All participants shall cover their travel expenses through their own cost allocation (Kostenstelle). The costs for meals and accommodation will be covered by the IP/TB Water integration budget.

For questions and suggestions, please contact the IP/TB manager Ilona Bärlund.

Looking forward to seeing you in Ottersleben!

Wednesday 27 August

10:30 → 11:00 Registration and coffee

11:00 → 11:30 Block 1: Plenary

• Welcome and formalities (Ilona Bärlund)
• Introduction to the workshop, IP updates (Jan Fleckenstein, Markus Weitere)

11:30 → 13:00 Block 2: Plenary – Project highlights [chair: Laura Soares]

• Method development for low flow assessment in German rivers to identify vulnerable river sections – experiences from the LAWA project (Olaf Büttner, Christian Schmidt, Ralf Merz)
• Functions, climate change and restoration in RESTOLINK – New answers to old questions (Julia Pasqualini, Mario Brauns)
• Closing the loop in FERRO: Phosphorus recovery and reuse for sustainable lake restoration (Tallent Dadi, Luis Braune)

13:00 → 14:00 Lunch

14:00 → 15:30 Block 3: Plenary – External guest [chair: Christian Schmidt]

Recognizing the scale, and identifying ways to fill the global ambient water quality data gap

Stuart Warner (UNEP Water Quality Consultant, Cork/Ireland)

Stuart will present the latest global results from UNEP’s implementation of SDG Indicator 6.3.2 on ambient water quality. He will discuss strategies for closing the identified data gaps, including the potential of citizen science and approaches to expand monitoring beyond basic in situ water quality parameters. The keynote will open a discussion on how our research can contribute to close this data gap, and to make best use of the limited water quality data available.

15:30 → 16:00 Coffee

16:00 → 16:30 Block 4: Poster pitches [chair: Ilona Bärlund]

16:30 → 18:00 Block 5: Mingle activity: Poster session

1. Christian Schmidt & co. - Developing an Action Plan for Macroplastic Monitoring in the Nile Basin
2. Christian Siebert & co. - The Harz Mountain Observatory
3. Olaf Büttner & co. - Where are streams with ecological low water risk in Germany?
4. Amir Rouhani & co. - Showcasing the Bode river basin: A digital twin approach to multisectoral water management
5. Li Yao & co. - Responses of wetted river network contraction and expansion dynamics to prolonged drought
6. Felipe Saavedra - Hydrological events on nutrient mobilization
7. Tam Van Nguyen & co. - Projecting future riverine nitrogen exports to the Wadden Sea
8. Pia Ebeling & co. - TBD
9. Younes Garosi & co. - An introduction about AQUWALD project
10. Julia Pasqualini & co. - Dam removal is essential but not sufficient for the recovery of microbial functioning in streams
11. Mathias Scholz & co. - Quantification approaches to assess above ground Carbon stocks and sequestration in floodplain forests
12. Katrin Wendt-Potthoff & co. - Natural particles to be used as control for the risk assessment of particulate pollutants
13. Eberhard Küster & co. - Tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA): Effect on Different Life Stages and Transgenerational  Toxicity in Lymnea stagnalis
14. Peter Herzsprung & co. - Intermediate products during natural organic matter biogeochemical processing, a case study inducing photo transformations followed by liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry
15. Angus Rocha Vogel & co. - Sequential Extraction of Trace Metals from Tire and Road Wear Particles

18:00 → 18:30 Short break

18:30 → 21:30 Dinner & informal get-together

Thursday 28 August

07:30 → 08:30 Breakfast for those staying overnight

08:30 → 10:00 Block 6: Plenary - PhD college session [chair: Felipe Saavedra]

08:30-09:40 P-SPACE ending
- Intro (Andreas Musolff)
- Microbial control of sediment phosphorus release along a river-floodplain gradient under changing hydrological connectivity and drought (Michele Meyer)
- Parsimonious modelling of algal regime dynamics across river networks to mitigate eutrophication (Niklas Heinemann, presented by Olaf Büttner)
- Analysing large-scale empirical data to understand and predict the variability in eutrophication (Alexander Hubig)
- The connectivity of floodplain lakes and their resilience to drought (Luisa Coder, presented by Jörg Tittel)
- Outro/Synthesis (Andreas Musolff)

09:40-10:00 SEESAW starting (Larisa Tarasova)

10:00 → 10:30 Coffee

10:30 → 12:30 Block 7: Plenary - Quo vadis? [chairs: Ilona Bärlund, Karsten Rinke]

10:30-10:45 Introduction to the session and short update on the status quo of the UFZ strategy 2035 process (Markus Weitere)

10:45-11:15 Lessons learned in POF IV for development of POF V
- Role of cooperation with other Helmholtz Centres in the NAPSEA project (Andreas Musolff)
- Benefits of structured graduate programs for PhD and POF – lessons learned from 5.5 years TRACER (Sandra Hille)
- The TERENO and eLTER infrastructures – commitment and opportunity (Steffen Zacharias)

11:15-12:00 Status quo of the POF V development from the IP Freshwaters perspective
- Topic F 'Landscape management: Towards a sustainable use of multifunctional landscapes' (Karsten Rinke)
- Topic E 'Processes and dynamics of the earth surface system, its ecosystems and biodiversity' (Mario Brauns, Markus Weitere)
- Synthesis theme on Pollution (Werner Brack, Christian Schmidt)
- Synthesis theme on Carbon (Norbert Kamjunke)
- Synthesis theme on Ecosystem Resilience (Markus Weitere)
- Cross-cutting activity on Water Security (Dietrich Borchardt)

12:00-12:30 Discussion: Thoughts on potential contributions from IP Freshwaters

12:30 → 13:00 Block 8: Final plenary [chairs: Jan Fleckenstein, Markus Weitere]

• Administrative issues
• What happens next in the IP
• Workshop wrap-up

13:00 → 14:00 Lunch