News
Monday 28 August 2023
Shellfish on the run create unstable mudflats
The expected increase in extreme weather could make the bottom of tidal flats more unstable. That's shown by NIOZ researcher Zhengquan Zhou in the PhD-thesis he will defend at Utrecht University on September 7th. "With the increase in heat waves,…
Thursday 24 August 2023
Battle between land and sea obeys mathematical laws
The disappearance of nature in front of dikes in the pounding waves, as well as the return of resilient nature on the boundary of land and water, obey many more rules than one might think. Conservationists and nature managers who know these laws, can…
Thursday 24 August 2023
Pear trees teeming with fish and other sea life
Artificial reefs in the Wadden Sea, made from discarded pear trees are teeming with marine life after more than a year underwater. That's shown in experiments by Jon Dickson, PhD candidate at NIOZ. "After four months, we already saw lots of fish and…
Friday 18 August 2023
Calcifying algae as key players in climate models
Over the past 500 million years, different single-celled organisms in the oceans have discovered at different times and also under very different conditions how to build a ‘shell’ around their single cell. “Six different strategies under just as many…
Thursday 10 August 2023
Lake sediments suggest that the Horn of Africa reached a drought tipping point 11,700 years ago
‘Wet gets wetter, dry gets drier’. That mantra has been used for decennia to predict how global warming affects the hydrological cycle. Climate models predict that much of tropical Africa will enjoy a future with wetter weather. The question is why…
Wednesday 09 August 2023
Social distancing seals: an evolutionary response to pathogen transmission?
During the Covid-19 pandemic, many countries implemented social distancing measures, which significantly reduced transmission rates of the virus. Scientists at Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), Wageningen University & Research…
Tuesday 08 August 2023
Evidence of hydrothermal vent animals, in volcanic caves beneath the ocean floor
A new ecosystem has been discovered in volcanic caves beneath hydrothermal vents at a well-studied undersea volcano at 2.500m depth. Using an underwater robot, scientists overturned chunks of volcanic crust, discovering cave systems teeming with…
Thursday 03 August 2023
Veni grant for effects of heat waves on marine communities in shallow coastal seas.
(For Dutch, scroll down) NWO has awarded a Veni funding of EUR 280,000 to Oscar Franken of the University of Groningen and NIOZ. This will allow him to further develop his own research ideas over the next three years.
Friday 28 July 2023
Breeding season not increasingly earlier, but unpredictable
Sanderlings are having an increasingly difficult time in their breeding grounds in Greenland. This is not always because climate change is causing spring to start earlier and earlier there, as is often assumed, but rather because the season is…
Tuesday 25 July 2023
Sahara dust can enhance removal of methane from the atmosphere
There is a hidden link between Saharan dust clouds and the levels of atmospheric methane – a strong greenhouse gas. A team of international scientists, including Jan-Berend Stuut, studied a mechanism that could significantly alter our understanding…
