Publications related to Ecology and Biogeography of Bacterial Communities Associated with Chloroethene-Contaminated Aquifers

Nature-based solution enhances resilience to flooding and catalyzes multi-benefits in coastal cities in the Global South

Jérôme Chenal, Paolo Perona, Charlotte Grossiord, Montana Marshall, Emmanuel Qays Dubois

Coastal cities are facing a rise in groundwater levels induced by sea level rise, further triggering saturation excess flooding where groundwater levels reach the topographic surface or reduce the storage capacity of the soil, thus stressing the existing i ...

2024

At what spatial scale does natural selection operate? Using multiscale frameworks to calibrate the effects of environmental factors across landscape continuums

Annie Sandrine Guillaume

Patterns in nature arise from processes interacting across a continuum of spatial scales, where new relationships emerge at each level of investigation. These patterns are nested features encompassing fine-scale local patterns, such as topography and geolo ...

EPFL2024

Contribution of standardized indexes to understand groundwater level fluctuations in response to meteorological conditions in cold and humid climates

Emmanuel Qays Dubois

Understanding the fluctuations in groundwater levels in response to meteorological conditions is challenging, especially given the slow transit time associated with groundwater reservoirs and the short duration of time series for groundwater levels. Nevert ...

2024

Epidemicity indices and reproduction numbers from infectious disease data in connected human populations

Andrea Rinaldo, Lorenzo Mari, Marino Gatto, Cristiano Trevisin

We focus on distinctive data-driven measures of the fate of ongoing epidemics. The relevance of our pursuit is suggested by recent results proving that the short-term temporal evolution of infection spread is described by an epidemicity index related to th ...

2024

The microbial genomics of glacier-fed streams: adaptations to an extreme ecosystem

Massimo Bourquin

Glacier-fed streams are the cold, ultra-oligotrophic, and unstable streams that are fed by glacial meltwater. Despite these extreme conditions, they harbour a diverse and abundant microbial diversity that develops into biofilms, covering the boulders and s ...

EPFL2024

Multiscale Spatiotemporal Characterization of Embodied Environmental Performance of Building Structures in Geneva from 1850 to 2018

Corentin Jean Dominique Fivet, Catherine Elvire L. De Wolf, Serena Vanbutsele

Load-bearing systems in buildings, significant in material use and embodied greenhouse gas emissions (EGHGE), have lacked detailed analysis on their environmental and functional relationships over time and space. This study evaluates the environmental impa ...

2024

Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Flow and Hydrochemistry in Drainage Networks

Izabela Bujak-Ozga

Despite their high ecological value, non-perennial streams have received less attention than their perennial counterparts. This doctoral thesis addresses this disparity by advancing knowledge on the dynamics of the drainage density and hydrologic processes ...

EPFL2024

Data-driven statistical optimization of a groundwater monitoring network

Andrea Rinaldo, Gianluca Botter

We propose a comparative study of three different methods aimed at optimizing existing groundwater monitoring networks. Monitoring piezometric heads in subsurface porous formations is crucial at regional scales to properly characterize the relevant subsurf ...

Elsevier2024

A state-of-the-art, systematic review of indoor environmental quality studies in work-from-home settings

Giorgia Chinazzo

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant increase in working from home worldwide, making the workfrom-home (WFH) setting a crucial context for studying the influence of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) on workers' well-being and productivity. A nar ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Spatial Modeling for Building Design Evaluation: from Visual Landscape Quality Assessment to Devaluation Risk Estimation

Adam Robert Swietek

Zoning reform is a crucial tool for cities to adapt to contemporary challenges. However, its implementation remains challenging. Property owners, with a vested interest in the value of their neighborhoods, are sensitive to local developments and the potent ...

EPFL2024

Watertable fluctuations in coastal unconfined aquifers with a sloping sea boundary: Vertical flow and dynamic effective porosity effects

David Andrew Barry, Zhaoyang Luo

Interactions between the tide and sloping sea boundary make watertable fluctuations in coastal unconfined aquifers complicated. Based on a perturbation method, we derived a new analytical solution to predict watertable fluctuations for coastal unconfined a ...

2023

Effects of Unsaturated Flow on Salt Distributions in Tidally Influenced Coastal Unconfined Aquifers

David Andrew Barry, Zhaoyang Luo

Unsaturated flow influences both the seawater extent under steady-state conditions and the propagation of tides in coastal aquifers. However, its effects on salt distributions in tidally influenced coastal aquifers are little investigated. The present stud ...

2023

The Effects of Spatial Organization and Fluid Flow on the Social Interactions in Microbial Communities

Jeremy Pak Hei Wong

Bacteria often engage in social interactions with neighbouring bacteria. Ecosystems which are subjected to social interactions have been widely studied in well mixed settings such as test tubes, allowing us to identify the cellular components contributing ...

EPFL2023

Homogeneous Environmental Selection Structures the Bacterial Communities of Benthic Biofilms in Proglacial Floodplain Streams

Leïla Ezzat, Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Jade Brandani, Tyler Joe Kohler, Stylianos Fodelianakis, Massimo Bourquin, Susheel Bhanu Busi, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud

Streams draining proglacial floodplains harbor benthic biofilms comprised of diverse microbial communities. These high-mountain ecosystems are rapidly changing with climate warming, and it is therefore critical to better understand the mechanisms underlyin ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2023

Comparison of Three Imputation Methods for Groundwater Level Timeseries

Andrea Rinaldo

This study compares three imputation methods applied to the field observations of hydraulic head in subsurface hydrology. Hydrogeological studies that analyze the timeseries of groundwater elevations often face issues with missing data that may mislead bot ...

MDPI2023

The Reef Environment Centralized InFormation System (RECIFS) : An integrated geo‐environmental database for coral reef research and conservation

Stéphane Joost, Oliver Michele Selmoni

Motivation: Host to intricate networks of marine species, coral reefs are among the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth. Over the past few decades, major degradations of coral reefs have been observed worldwide, which is largely attributed to the ...

2023

Ecosystem engineering by periphyton in Alpine proglacial streams

Matteo Roncoroni, Tom Ian Battin, Marc Aguet, Adrijan Selitaj, Davide Mancini

Stream periphytons are candidate ecosystem engineers in proglacial margins. Here, we quantify the extent to which they are engineers for the case of hillslope-fed tributaries in the terrace zones of proglacial margin alluvial plains. Candidate ecosystem en ...

WILEY2023

Metabolic influence of core ciliates within the rumen microbiome

Yu Jiang, Ianina Altshuler

Protozoa comprise a major fraction of the microbial biomass in the rumen microbiome, of which the entodiniomorphs (order: Entodiniomorphida) and holotrichs (order: Vestibuliferida) are consistently observed to be dominant across a diverse genetic and geogr ...

2023

Development of a magnetic calcium-alginate hydrogel-sphere encapsulated with Fe-Mn-Zr ternary metal composite for heavy metal adsorption

Xinyi Huang

Heavy metal contamination has become one of the greatest global environmental problems. In this study, a magnetic calcium-alginate hydrogel-sphere encapsulated with Fe-Mn-Zr ternary-metal composite (MCHETC) was prepared through a combined co-precipitation ...

2023

Perfect adaptation achieved by transport limitations governs the inorganic phosphate response in S. cerevisiae

Sebastian Maerkl, Michael Andrew Crone, Hon Ming Andrew Yip, Evan James Olson, Shiyu Cheng

Cells cope with and adapt to ever-changing environmental conditions. Sophisticated regulatory networks allow cells to adjust to these fluctuating environments. One such archetypal system is the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Pho regulon. When external inorganic ...

National Academy of Sciences2023