Arrived Safe & Sound In Cambridge! America Is Crazy, But I Think We Are On Good Terms. The Sheer Amount

inspired by Ludovic Florent´s series "stardust"  - oil on paper

lost direction.

I really love fall with all its rain, and colours and thunderstorms and cosiness. But thinking back to summer on one of those rainy days while being stuck on my term paper feels so surreal. 

A Paradise Drowning in Trash 

This past semester I got to be part of the ETH transdisciplinary case study, investigating solid waste management on the island of Seychelles. This small island developing state is facing an immense challenge with its trash: almost exclusively relying on landfilling the island is literally filling up. Filling up - in trash. Further, current landfills are absolutely ill-equipped for the amount and types of material deposited; there is currently no capacity for leachate treatment. With various kinds of hazardous materials such as chemical residues, pharmaceutical products, asbestos etc. entering the landfill, the lack of proper lining at Providence I (one of the two main landfills) represents an incredible risk for groundwater contamination.  More info @http://www.tdlab.usys.ethz.ch/teaching/tdcs/former/cs2018.html

Baumpilz & Birke im Herbst - watercolour on paper

polypore & birch - it really is fall in Zürich now!

a visit to lake zürich with a lovely person 

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. 

Pseudocythus maculatus  original illustration in “Fishes of the southern ocean”

inspired by Lee Jeffries "homeless"" - oil on paper