Project: MULTIP – Multifunctional irrigation ponds
MULTIP investigates whether irrigation ponds built to benefit agricultural productivity also promote biodiversity.
Project information
Project manager
Petter Tibblin
Other project members
Oscar Nordahl, Jasper Münnich, Romana Salis, Anders Johnson, Linnaeus University, Margaret Docker, Jessie Ogden, University of Manitoba, Anti Vasemägi, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Participating organizations
Linnaeus University, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, University of Manitoba, Station Linné
Financier
The position is funded by a Lamm Foundation PhD grant.
Co-financed by Linnaeus Knowledge Environment: Water and the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at Linnaeus University
Timetable
2024-08-15 till 2028-08-14
Subject
Ecology (Department of Biology and Environment, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences)
Research group
Fish Ecology Research Group (FERG), Linnaeus University Centre for Ecology and Evolution in Microbial model Systems (EEMiS)
Knowledge Environment
Linnaeus Knowledge Environment: Water
More about the project
MULTIP investigates the ecological role of artificial ponds built for crop irrigation in the drought-impacted south-east Sweden. While irrigation ponds constantly increase in abundance to adjust agriculture to climate change, natural freshwater habitats have been lost through historical drainage and the remaining ones are severely threatened by the changing climate. Today irrigation ponds constitute the dominant freshwater habitat in many agricultural areas, yet their potential to mitigate the loss of natural waters and the associated biodiversity is largely unknown.
The project addresses this knowledge gap by quantifying aquatic biodiversity of irrigation ponds and adjacent wetlands located on the island Öland. The use of cutting edge eDNA technique enables exhaustive biodiversity data collection. This will allow to investigate community assembly and underlying drivers in irrigation ponds but also to test fundamental ecological processes of metacommunities and overall ecosystem functioning. The conceptual insights will help to evaluate how irrigation ponds can combine ecological and socioeconomical gains.
The project is part of the research in the Fish Ecology Research Group (FERG), Linnaeus University Centre for Ecology and Evolution in Microbial model Systems (EEMiS) and Linnaeus Knowledge Environment: Water