Carbon Cycle - Blog Posts

Hippos vs. Cows  This semester at uni I got to work on a topic completely new to me and so exciting - hippos! Who would have thought that hippos are actually quite the ecosystem engineers? The amount of organic matter these herbivores transport to rives and lakes is quite impressive, and the fact that their population is in danger is really not good news for the aquatic food chain and everybody who depends on it. The simultaneous explosion of cattle herds in Africa is another factor that complicates the matter - considering only the cows’ methane emissions really misses a large part of the picture! I think its so fascinating to see how the theoretical science you study as a student finally gets applied and produces meaningful data in the field - in this case people used C and N isotopic data to trace hippo/cow input into and along the food chain.