University of Groningen
Emergent properties of bio-physical self-organization in streams
Cornacchia, Loreta
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Publication date: 2018
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Cornacchia, L. (2018). Emergent properties of bio-physical self-organization in streams. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
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Acknowledgements
I’m now at the end of my PhD path, and looking back at the last four years, it is clear that none of this would have been possible without the help of many people. One of the best parts of my PhD was getting to know and working with all of you, and I would like to thank you for helping me to successfully complete this thesis.
First of all, I would like to thank my supervisors Tjeerd Bouma, Johan van de Koppel and Daphne van der Wal for giving me this great opportunity. You are an amazing supervisory team, and during these years I always felt so lucky to have such a diverse input from your wide range of expertise and perspectives. You encouraged me to ‘step out of the aquatic system’ and think about cool ecological questions, to focus on clearer ways to communicate my findings, and to develop my own independent thinking. Your enthusiasm and passion for research are contagious, and after every meeting I had renewed energy and motivation to keep me going. You have been a continuous source of inspiration during these four years, and I’m grateful you shared your knowledge with me. Thank you for your trust and freedom to explore scientific questions, for always pushing me to improve, and for the time you spent going through so many drafts of the thesis and manuscripts. Working with you has been a great learning experience, in both professional and personal terms. Thank you for everything you have done for me. I would like to thank my supervisors in the HYTECH project, Sara Puijalon and Geraldene Wharton, who guided me from the start with their knowledge of freshwater systems and aquatic macrophytes. Your input and collaboration have been essential in developing my project. Sara, I am very grateful for all our discussions, that started in the first months of my PhD with developing my experimental plans, and continue now with writing and revising manuscripts. Thanks for welcoming into your lab in Lyon for two summers in a row, advising me on experimental methods, selecting the field sites and finding students, and ensuring that everything went smoothly during my fieldwork. I greatly enjoyed my
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stay, and my fieldwork would not have been possible without your support. Geraldene, I’m really glad I got to meet you during the project and we started this collaboration. My one-week visit in London during my 2nd year has been extremely
important for my whole PhD, and helped me develop many new ideas for my future experiments. Thank you for your warm welcome and discussions during my secondment in London, and your continued support and guidance in drafting and revising manuscript. I would like to thank you, Grieg Davies and Robert Grabowski for sharing your field surveys and starting our collaboration on different manuscripts.
I want to thank the other researchers that I was lucky enough to meet and work with, and greatly contributed to this thesis: Andrew Folkard, Heidi Nepf, Stijn Temmerman, Grieg Davies and Robert Grabowski. Thank you for always being available to discuss experimental plans, results, ideas and draft manuscripts with me. Discussing science with you is always very inspiring and I really enjoyed this collaboration. I hope we can find more opportunities to do so in the future.
Being a fellow in the Marie Curie ITN “HYTECH” project has been an amazing experience. I would like to thank the project coordinator Andrea Marion for this unique opportunity, and for agreeing to act as opponent in my thesis committee. Thanks to the project manager Matteo Tregnaghi for all his work for the project.
Thank you to all the HYTECH fellows for the great time together. I particularly want to thank Sofia Licci. It was great to have another ecologist (and Italian!) in a group of engineers. I’m happy I could share good and bad days at work with you, as well as fun moments in Lyon or wading in the contre-canaux (“no patches were harmed in the making of this thesis”). It was great to collaborate on our flume experiments at NIOZ. I am grateful for our discussions on experimental plans, results, writing papers, finding the best gelato in Lyon, vacation plans and life as an Italian abroad. Thank you also for helping me find a great accommodation for my stay in Lyon, and with preparation for fieldwork. My whole PhD would not have been so pleasant without you.
I am very thankful for all the past and present members of the Department of Estuarine and Delta Systems (former Spatial Ecology) in NIOZ-Yerseke: Peter,
Roeland, Sarah, Laura, Zhenchang, Tatiana, Koen, Simeon, Jim, Klaas, Dick, Pieter, Celine, Haobing, Jiaguo, Zhigang, Jaco, Justin, Chiu, Guorong, Alex, Tisja, Tanja, Rebecca, Sandra, Jildou, Greg, Bas, Alina, Achmad, Francesco, Lucy, Veronica, Maria, Heng, Daan, Annette, and many more. A big thanks to Sarah and Roeland for agreeing to be my paranymphs, and to Roeland for translating my summary into Dutch. Thank you all for the support and encouragement during department meetings, OEI-ecology and modellers meetings, the discussions and exchange of ideas during coffee or lunch breaks, and winding down with Friday beers. I had a great time at the NIOZ, and I could not have imagined working in a better environment.
Many thanks to Bert Sinke, Jeroen van Dalen, Lennart van IJzerloo and Lowie Haazen for the invaluable technical support during my experiments. In particular, thank you Bert for always being there when I needed to build last-minute equipment or assistance in the flume, and always with a smile. Thanks to the Analytical lab in Yerseke, in particular Peter van Breugel, Marco Houtekamer and Jan Peene for their help with the sample analyses. Many thanks to Christine and Elly for their support and kindness, James for his invaluable work in the institute and managing de Keete, Anneke and Joke for the administrative support. Thank you to all the people with whom I shared the guesthouse ‘De Keete’. It is wonderful to have such an international place; I met many great people there and had lots of fun during common dinners and parties. I particularly want to thank Clara and Laura. I will always remember the dinners, evenings out, bike rides or just chatting about the food, weather, friendship, etc. with both of you. It is sometimes hard to live abroad, but sharing this with you has made it so much easier. Although you moved to Texel and back to France, I hope we can keep in touch and meet regularly.
Although I’ve been mostly based in NIOZ-Yerseke, I spent almost a year of my project abroad for my secondments. I was in Lyon during the summers of 2014 and 2015, and many people helped me during my time there. Thanks to everyone in the laboratoire LEHNA for hosting me. Merci Vanessa Gardette pour ton aide avec les échantillons et sur le terrain, et pour les sorties à Lyon. Merci Felix Vallier pour ton aide sur le terrain, pour résoudre les problèmes avec les ordinateurs et les équipements, et me rappeler de faire des pauses sur le terrain. Merci René et
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Cristophe pour votre hébergement pendant ma visite, et pour les nombreux dîners ensemble. Thanks to the members of the School of Geography at QMUL for my great time there. Thank you Alex and Tatiana Sukhodolova for the hospitality in your department at IGB, the inspiring scientific discussions and the suggestions for sightseeing in and around Berlin.
Thanks to all the students who contributed to this thesis and helped a great deal during long days of lab or fieldwork, in France or in the Netherlands: Youssouf, Bruno, Siebren, Solène, Elie, Nachati, Nina. Thanks Alina for your friendship and help with sample analysis in the lab. Thanks to Francesca Sangiorgi for putting me in contact with students and helping me with the supervision.
I would like to thank the CNR (Compagnie Nationale du Rhône) for providing access to field sites. I also want to thank Ivan Mikolji for the cover image. Next, I would like to thank my Master supervisors Andrea Taramelli and Emiliana Valentini for mentoring me in my first steps of scientific research. Thanks to you, I realized that I wanted to pursue a PhD. Your passion and hard-working attitude really made a mark on me. I’m glad we kept in touch regularly during these years and I’m looking forward to continuing our collaboration in the future. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends in Italy. Grazie a tutti i miei familiari che mi hanno accompagnato e sostenuto lungo questo percorso. Mamma, papà e Mario, vi ringrazio per tutto quello che avete fatto e ancora fate per me. Grazie per il supporto morale e per essere stati sempre al mio fianco. Avete sempre creduto in me e mi avete detto che potevo farcela, anche quando io stessa dubitavo. Se ho raggiunto questo traguardo è grazie a voi.
Grazie Arcangela per essere mia amica dalle scuole medie…ormai da quanti anni ci conosciamo?! Nonostante la distanza, quando ci rivediamo è come se il tempo non fosse mai passato. Grazie per il supporto e l’incoraggiamento, per essermi venuta a trovare a Lyon e Amsterdam, e per avermi ospitato a Milano. Grazie a te e Ciccio per essere venuti alla cerimonia, a condividere questo giorno speciale con me.
Grazie Francesco, a te avevo promesso un (meritato) paragrafo di ringraziamenti. Inizio dal ringraziarti per essere qui con me in Olanda, non è stata una scelta facile ma ora non vogliamo più ritornare! Un ringraziamento speciale per essere stato incoraggiante e paziente durante i miei alti e bassi, e per riuscire sempre a tirarmi su di morale. Grazie per il design della mia copertina! Non so come avrei fatto senza di te, e non vedo l’ora di condividere tante altre esperienze con te in futuro.
Thanks for all your help and encouragement!
Loreta
