Lake Balaton LTER Site, Balaton LTER - Hungary

Research at the Balaton Limnological Institute focuses on aquatic ecology, with an emphasis on shifts in community structure and on causal relationships between the observed changes and ecosystem processes. The main areas of research include nutrient cycling, humic substances, phytoplankton and macrophyte ecophysiology, zooplankton and zoobenthos, food web relationships, fish population dynamics, invasive species and environmental toxicology. The institute also maintains an algal culture collection for laboratory experiments. Due to regular monitoring, there is an extensive data set on Lake Balaton covering the last 20 years. Phytoplankton research has yielded a particularly long data series dating back to the 1930s. Water samples are collected on a biweekly/monthly basis at two stations in the eastern and western part of the lake, or occasionally at five stations along the E-W axis.