Research project Biodegradation of Organic Micropollutants in Rivers

The self-purification capacity of rivers is an important ecosystem service (ES) dominated by microbial biodegradation. It compensates for what wastewater treatment plants do not fully achieve: eliminating relatively stable and mobile contaminants from the water cycle. These micropollutants (e.g. pharmaceuticals) pose a risk to ecosystems and human health. While the ES protects the environment and our drinking water supply, our understanding of it is limited. Also, factors controlling it such as temperature are changing which could threaten the quality of our water supply. The project will pool hydrological, biogeochemical and analytical tools to determine biodegradation rates in situ. This will enable a first systematic assessment of biodegradation capacities and associated control factors in 20 rivers across climatic gradients. We will quantify the influence of environmental factors to predict biodegradation capacities and map the importance of the ES for protecting water quality. Embedded stakeholder issues to be addressed include strategies to promote the ES in a changing climate and optimization of drinking water resource management.