Hydropower is a well-known and popular alternative to the burning of fossil fuels due to its simplicity and relatively low cost. Unfortunately, these hydropower installations tend to have an impact on the environment. The HydroCORE project uses this notice as a basis to perform its activities, while using the Paute river basin in Cuenca (Ecuador) as study area. To communicate the findings, a project-specific website has been developed for HydroCORE.

The Scheldt river finds it origin in France and continues its path through Belgium and the Netherlands, where it connects to the North Sea. Tidal activity runs as deep as the city of Ghent, where sluices prevent further intrusion of the tide and help maintain a stable water level within the city. The wide variety of activities around and within the Scheldt estuary basin affects the inherent characteristics of the river, though multiple mitigation strategies are in place to (continue to) improve the functioning of the Scheldt estuary. Every six years, an extensive T-report brings the monitoring data of the past six years together and evaluates the condition of the Scheldt estuary against a set of predefined criteria. The latest version covers the period 2016-2021 (T2021) and is being written by HKV, Antea Group, Waardenburg Ecology, and Ghent University. More information can be found on the website of VNSC (in Dutch) and on the Scheldemonitor (the platform for all Scheldt-related information).

The human brain is a complex structure and deviations can occur both at the structural and functional level. Deviations at the functional level (e.g., depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder) tend to be diagnosed based on interviews and associated symptom scores. More objective techniques to diagnose patients are desired, one of which is the use of functional neuroimaging techniques (e.g., EEG, PET, fMRI). The temporal profile of these fMRI signals are unique, though expected to be consistent among subjects of the same patient group. These patterns can be assessed through an alternative representation of the data as a bipartite network (signal-subject) and cluster inference via topic models. The obtained results show that clustering of patients based on the fMRI signals is possible, but suggest that there is another factor that steers the clustering (i.e. the infered clusters did not represent the known patient groups). More information of the project (available data, methodology, results) can be found in the report (UGent only) while the underlying scripts can be found on GitHub.

Freshwater systems experience ever-growing pressures due to an increasing world population, the rising globalisatio, and a changing climate. In order to use land and water in a more efficient manner, one has to consider the protection and development of valuable ecosystem services that society receives from nature. To steer and support this, correlative models were developed to delineate the optimal abiotic conditions of a water body for a selection of aquatic macrophytes. Specific attention was given to cleaning of the available data, after which five important habitat descriptors and the associated optimal conditions were inferred. For the selected macrophytes, temperature (> 17 °C), nitrate-nitrogen (between 0.5 mg∙L^-1 and 1.5 mg∙L^-1), oxygen (between 4 mg∙L^-1 and 7 mg∙L^-1), ammonium-nitrogen (between 0.3 mg∙L^-1 and 0.5 mg∙L^-1) and pH (between 7 and 8.5) appeared to be most important. Obtaining these conditions improves the chance of survival and establishment of the selected macrophytes, conditional to their introduction (natural or artificial). The models were supplemented with experiments on the alien Lemna minuta, aiming to support the proactive and reactive management of alien invasive macrophytes. More information of the project (available data, methodology, results) can be found in the report.

Global plastic production increases each year starting at an annual production of 1.7 million tonnes in 1950 up to 288 million tonnes in 2012. At the same time, an increase in plastic presence in domestic waste has been noted, going from 0.4 % in 1960 to about 10 % nowadays. Plastics are easily produced and can be used for almost invisible applications, going from scrubbers in personal care products to fibers in synthetic clothing. The majority of these plastics are small, with dimensions frequently lower than 5 mm and are consequently called microplastics. As such, domestic wastewater is polluted with small plastics which are believed to flow through the sewage treatment plant (STP) without being retained. In order to be able to describe the removal efficiency of a STP samples of the influent, effluent, overflow, thickened sludge, and skimmed layer were collected. Based on these samples, a removal efficiency of 47 % was observed when comparing the effluent with the influent. More information of the project (available data, methodology, results) can be found in the report.