ecoBay: Preventative Care for Bavaria's Lakes

An AI Early-Warning System for Bavarian Lakes

Rising temperatures and extreme weather events are putting freshwater ecosystems worldwide under pressure. Consequently, the five-year joint project ecoBay by Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) is developing an early-warning system for Bavarian lakes. The interdisciplinary research team combines limnology with cutting-edge technology to detect and predict ecological changes across different levels of biodiversity well before visible damage occurs.

Interdisciplinary Alliance

Data collection is based on an innovative interplay of technology and biology on the water. Autonomous surface and underwater robots navigate precise routes to continuously measure physical parameters, such as water temperature and oxygen levels, and collect water samples. In the laboratory, researchers analyze these samples using environmental genomics: genetic traces in the water can provide meaningful information about the entire biological diversity without disturbing animals or plants. Ultimately, all this data flows into a cloud-based Artificial Intelligence that learns how the lake responds to stressors and uses this information to create precise ecological predictive models.

In Practice

In practice, researchers are testing this technology under real-world conditions at Lake Ammersee and Lake Großer Ostersee. The limnological research stations of LMU in Wartaweil and TUM in Iffeldorf serve as logistical bases, where researchers regularly cross-reference the robot-collected data with samples gathered by research divers. Alongside scientific success, ecoBay focuses heavily on knowledge transfer. All project results, data, and software components are freely accessible as open source, providing authorities, policymakers, and the public with a transparent and reliable foundation for the long-term protection of water bodies.