Korhan was a guest speaker on “All Aspects of Science” a METU youtube live broadcast. He talked about ecology and environmental science, our research project on high altitude and high lattitude ecosystems,, climate change as well as experimental ecology. Korhan will be presenting the next episode of the program with Çiğdem Atakuman, the next guest speaker, at METU Main Campus, Ankara.
Click here to watch the talk.
Korhan gave a talk about Anatolian Lakes facing extinction crisis. Also, he mentioned of potentials of experimental ecology researches in his speech. Thank you ITU AYBE for their invitation and this great organization.
Click here to watch the talk.
In last weeks, our team made great effort to start-up mesocosm facility for the first experiments of saline lakes research. This involved collect innoculum (all kinds of living material) from natural lakes and populate our experimental tanks with tem. We started experimetal treatment of different salt concentrations. We are looking forward to see exiting results soon!
Well done everyone!
Korhan has attended IAS & TUBA Biodiversity Webinar as a speaker with his presentation titled Anatolian Aquatic Biodiversity in the Face of Climate Change and Intensifying Anthropogenic Pressures. Thank you for this organization to IAS & TUBA.
You can watch the webinar on the Islamic World Academy of Sciences YouTube Channel:
The latest article by the saline lakes team “Decadal changes in size, salinity, waterbirds, and fish in lakes of the Konya Closed Basin, Turkey, associated with climate change and increasing water abstraction for agriculture” is now available online and will be published in the “Temporary Ponds and Shallow Lakes under Global Change” special issue of The Inland Waters. The paper gives a comprehensive account of the dramatic changes, which are mainly driven by the land-use and climate change, the largest endorheic basin of Turkey has been undergoing since the last 40 years in terms of salinization and size reduction of the lakes, decline of groundwater level and changes in waterbird and fish fauna. The article also includes modelling projections using various climate and land use scenarios which predict serious additional reductions of the water level in the future due to climate change, leading to deterioration (or complete loss) of lake ecosystems.
Our team encountered an unprecedented loss of lakes in Anatolia during the expedition for the saline lakes project. Mustafa from our team gave interviews for national press about our fieldwork on saline lakes ecosytems and specifically on Acıgöl which was seriously affected by the drought.
Click here for the NTV interview. (In Turkish)
Click here for the TRT News interview. (In Turkish)
Click here for the Hurriyet interview. (In Turkish)
Tekin, Serhat and Mustafa from our team are at an expedition in Konya North Basin for Saline Lakes Project with our collaborators METU Limnology Group, lead by Erik Jeppesen, Meryem Beklioğlu, Korhan Özkan and Zuhal Akyürek are head of this project.
The aim of the study is a novel understanding of the structure and functioning of different types of saline/brackish lake ecosystems and their response to key stressors (warming, abstraction and external nutrient loading).
Click here for more information about Saline Lakes Project.
Our project titled “Understanding the complex interaction of salinization and eutrophication on Green House Gas emissions of Anatolian inland waters” has been funded by METU. We will be compiling a basin-wide bottom up inventory of GHG flux from Anatolian saline lakes, and investigating complex relationship between biogenic GHG release, eutrophication and salinization, which involves positive- and negative- feedback loops and non-linear interactions. We are happy to collaborate with Meryem Beklioğlu @METU, Thomas Davidson and Joachim Audet @ Aarhus University (Denmark), and Pelin Ertürk Arı, Akif Arı and Nusret Karakaya @Abant Izzet Baysal University.
We carried out our first field study to test our GHG sampling strategy in April 16, in Akgöl, Göksu Estuary.
Tekin presented our recent work on Konya Closed Basin, which has been facing dramatic water loss, in the Shallow Lakes Conference, 2021. Our study describes the decadal changes in size and salinity of lakes, and also dramatic decline of waterbirds and fish abundance and species richnes in lakes in the Konya Closed Basin, Turkey, which are mainly associated with climate change and increasing water abstraction for agriculture. The study is a joint effort of our Saline Lakes project team along with many other contributors and describes the critical changes the basin has undergone on the recent years.
Fou our presentation:
We undertook a substantial effort to establish the first advanced mesocosm facility of Turkey to conduct experimental ecology research on aquatic ecosystems. We will be conducting experiments on the effect of salinisation and eutrophication in face of climate change on the lake and wetlands of Anatolia in 2021 and 2021. These facilities are being constructed as a part of the Saline Lakes Project and will be functioning at both METU Ankara and Erdemli Campuses in collaboration with Erik Jeppesen, Meryem Beklioğlu and Zuhal Akyürek. We are looking forward to conducting state of the art experiments where we will be elucidating ecological dynamics many years to come.
The tanks to be used in the system have reached the mesocosm areas. In addition, the construction works of the Mesocosm experiment area in Erdemli campus started.
