– EPFL wants to assess the health of Lake Geneva
The high school needs 500 volunteers to help it measure the clarity of the lake’s water.
Published today at 11:10 a.m.
Is Lake Geneva healthy? EPFL will investigate.
Florian Cella/24 hours
EPFL has launched a participatory science project with the aim of measuring the state of health of Lake Geneva, the university said on Thursday. In this context, it is looking for volunteers with a boat to collect data on the clarity of the waters of the largest Alpine lake until October 2025.
Of the approximately 500 volunteers sought as part of the Lémanscope project, nearly 270 have already been found, we can read on the dedicated website. Led by the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne (EPFL), the program is carried out in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Water Science and Technology (Eawag), the University of Lausanne (UNIL) and the Association for Safeguarding Lake Geneva (ASL).
No mixing
Lémanscope starts from a simple observation: faced with threats that are difficult to predict and because of incomplete data, scientists find it difficult to make a formal diagnosis on the health of the largest body of fresh water in Western Europe. Climate change, pollution, invasive species such as the quagga mussel are all elements that can harm water quality.
The absence of complete mixing of the lake too. This phenomenon – which usually occurs naturally, but has not occurred for 12 years – allows deep and surface water to mix and thus distribute oxygen and nutrients.
Need for benchmarks
Faced with these uncertainties, scientists are looking for benchmarks. Measuring the transparency and color of water provides valuable information about the health of a body of water, they say. This is where volunteers come in: after registering, they receive a scientific tool called a “secchi disk” which they must slide to the bottom of the water until they can no longer see it. They then report the measured data in an application to be downloaded to the mobile phone.
The measurements taken by the volunteers are then transmitted to scientists and coupled with satellite data. They ultimately contribute to a better understanding of the state of health of Lake Geneva, underlines EPFL.
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