The Institute for Lake Research of the Baden-Württemberg State Institute for the Environment (LUBW) has been observing and researching Lake Constance with all its habitats for several decades.
“We try to understand Lake Constance as well as possible in order to be able to protect it well,” says Dr. Martin Wessels, researcher at the Institute for Lake Research.
1990 and 2013
In order to be able to understand Lake Constance in the best possible way, there is a project of depth focus of the institution. In the course of this, from 2013 to 2015, high-resolution measurements of the third largest Central European lake were made using multibeam echo sounders and laser scanners. “On the one hand, out of curiosity, people want to record and know the information about the lake floor. On the other hand, the lake is of course used very intensively for a wide variety of issues. We take a lot of drinking water from Lake Constance. Around five million people drink water from Lake Constance,” explains Wessels.
Such surveys of the lake floor were already carried out in the 1990s. In the meantime, however, not only the measuring technology has changed, the bottom of the lake has also experienced some changes. “In 1990, there were some assumptions about the course of the Alpenrhein in Lake Constance, along the Seeboden. The new images show how richly structured the mouth of the Rhine is. With the individual channels and channel systems, you definitely didn’t know that,” emphasizes Dr. Martin Wessels in the Vorarlberg LIVE interview. Some wrecks or hills on the Swiss lake shore were also discovered in the course of the surveys.
The broadcast “Vorarlberg LIVE” is a cooperation between VOL.AT, VN.at, Ländle TV and VOL.AT TV and is broadcast from Monday to Friday from 5 p.m. There’s more here.
