Our summer of 2026 has been full of networking at conferences and project meetings as well as packed with the best part of research: fieldwork and data collection outdoors. The main highlights:
- Our doctoral researchers Samuel Amoah, Zannatul Ferdous and Zhouyang Tian presented on the effects of differently activated biochar on soil greenhouse gas emissions the effects of nutrient-loaded biochar on earthworms as well as on the stability of biochars in long-term and their impact on nitrogen retention under boreal conditions at the World Congress of Soil Science (WCSS), held in June in Nanjing, China. The conference was huge with more than 900 posters and hundreds of oral presentations and offered lots of chances for inspiring discussions, feedback on experimental methods and data interpretation and networking.
- Our doctoral researcher Mari Unnbom presented her and Jure Zrim's work on industrial recycling fertilizers on soil carbon, bacteria and fungi from the HYKERRYS projects at the The Nordic-Baltic scientific conference "Organics as a response to the urgent need for resilient food systems" on 15-17th June 2026, Uppsala, Sweden. She highlighted that carbon is the corner-stone of soil health, that builds into more resilient, shock-absorbent soils and got excellent feedback on this intriguing dataset from five-year field experiment.
- Further, in June we had also chance to come together with our EU project FERRO family in Silkeborg, Denmark during the FERRO General Assembly. Our doctoral researcher Franco Castillo presented there the findings
from short-term studies on sediment P dynamics, GHG emissions, and sonar
surveys. Olga Tammeorg shared insights from long-term analyses of internal P loading in six
lakes of southern Finland, aiming to develop targeted sediment removal
strategies and Priit covered the inspiring story of Lake Mustijärv, an experimental site in the
FERRO project to demonstrate best practices for lake sediment removal and recycling as fertilizers. The conclusion was that hypetrophic lakes can indeed be restored with lake sediment removal if the external loading is controlled with collaboration with stakeholders- but follow-up is crucial as the next step.
And this is exactly what we spent on the rest of the summer: data collection!
Next, its time to focus on harvesting the crops from field experiments!
- In Helsinki, we have been following up the long-term effects of nutrient-loaded biochars (now coming to end the 17th growing season!) on soil greenhouse gas emissions, nitrogen dynamics and the growth of oats, this effort has been spearheaded by our doctoral
researcher Jure Zrim but could not have been successfully completed without visiting student Fanta Keita from CY Cergy Paris Universite, exchange MSc student Douaa Batrash from University of Padova and intern Joona Ruuskanen (Metropoli lab school), in addition to our own MSc students Sadia Sabrina Tanni and Tabaraka Binte Ali. Thank you all for your dedication and great team spirit!
- As mentioned before, the follow-up of the lakes after complete sediment removal is critical, and this is what we have been busy with in our Estonian research site, Lake Mustijärv, where intense monitoring campaign on hydrochemistry, sediment nutrient dynamics, GHG emissions and macrophyte coverage has been carried out under the lead of Olga Tammeorg. We have been lucky to get quick analysis of the samples by Franco and Joona and we are extremely grateful for the fruitful research collaboration to colleagues Theis Kragh and Jonas Stage Sø from Denmark and Mihkel Pindus, Kuno Kasak, Helle Mäemets and Kadi Palmik from Estonia! The results so far have been rather promising, but let us see the full data by the end of season.
