Boat in front of a car bridge in a city. Photo.
The boat Ancylus II is used for sampling in Lake Mälaren. Photo: Stina Drakare.

Mälaren in focus

Page reviewed:  04/07/2025

A collaboration focusing on Lake Mälaren, aimed at strengthening the exchange between research and societal interests, and improving monitoring methods.

Collaboration between Water Conservation Associations and the University

Focus on Mälaren is a collaboration between the Mälaren Water Conservation Association (MVVF) and SLU. It has been running in its current form since 2018. Together, we work to identify the right measures in the right places — for clean water and healthy ecosystems in Lake Mälaren and its tributaries.

Activities

  • 2025-07-03

    Environmental assessment

    In order to track the environmental condition of Lake Mälaren, water chemistry, phytoplankton, zooplankton and invertebrate fauna are sampled annually in the lake's different sub-basins.
  • 2025-07-03

    Independent projects

    Do you want to do your independent project on Lake Mälaren? At the moment there are several available projects at the Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment.

About us

The Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment has long experience of research and environmental analysis with Mälaren in focus. A research project in the 1960s on eutrophication of Lake Mälaren is the origin of the entire department. The Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment carry out the sampling of water chemistry, phytoplankton and benthuc fauna in Lake Mälaren, and much of our ongoing research concerns Lake Mälaren or can be applied to Lake Mälaren.

The Lake Mälaren Water Conservation Association is a non-profit association that aims to contribute to a better foundation for community planning and other activities of significance for the water conditions in Lake Mälaren, for example by conducting environmental monitoring. The Water Conservation Association has nearly 50 member organizations, including municipalities, county boards, water boards (vattenförbund) and various companies.

Through the collaboration, it will be possible to link a large number of ongoing research projects at SLU to important issues in Lake Mälaren's catchment area. The collaboration will also include thesis at master and bachelor level, which can provide a quick overview of new interesting issues and provide information about the need for further knowledge acquisition or new more advanced methods of analysis.

"Climate changes threatens Lake Mälaren's ecosystem" - news about the latest Mälaren report.

Most reports are in Swedish and are listed on the Swedish version of this page.

Published master and bachelor thesis are listed at the page about student projects.

Online seminars about the latest results from research, environmental assessment and student projects.

The Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment together with Lake Mälaren's Water Conservation Association regularly organise online seminars (webinars) about research, environmental assessment and student projects. The webinars are open for anyone. The language used is usually Swedish.

See the Swedish version of this page for more information and documentation from previous webinars.

Up-coming webinars are announced in the SLU calendar.

Website of the Mälaren Water Conservation Association (MVVF)