The limnology department of the Zurich Water Supply (WVZ) has been working with a FlowCam 8400 since January 2020. The equipment includes four objectives (2x, 4x, 10x, and 20x) as well as a detector for the fluorescence of chlorophyll a. The FlowCam is used for raw water investigations (lake water).
Up to now, the phyto- and zooplankton are counted and determined manually on the microscope (procedure according to Utermöhl). If the FlowCam analyses provide comparable results, the manual counts and determinations could be partially automated in the future.
In order to achieve the best possible quality, our experienced systematists and micro scientists are working on image reference libraries that depict the most important species or organism groups from Lake Zurich. These then serve as the basis for automatic image analysis and recognition. The greatest challenge is the reliable, automatic differentiation of Planktothrix rubescens (a toxic cyanobacterium) from other filamentous algae.
The FlowCam is also used by a Ph.D. student of the Limnological Station of the University of Zurich. She uses the FlowCam to distinguish different ciliates and their predators (rota-tories) in the water and studies the ecology of these microbes in the lake.
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