The functioning of water ecosystems and their protection

Introduction

Professor Marek E. Kraska is a famous Polish hydrobiologist who has been affiliated throughout his career with Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He began his scientific work as a botanist under the supervision of Prof. Florian Celiński and then continued under the supervision of Prof. Izabela Dąmbska. Both his doctoral and post-doctoral theses were devoted to hydromacrophytes. In the 1970s and 1980s, together with Prof. Izabela Dąmbska, the head of Department of Hydrobiology, he undertook research of the aquatic vegetation of numerous lakes in the Lubuskie Lake District, within the area of the future Drawieński National Park, the Słowiński National Park, the Wielkopolski National Park, the lakes of Gniezno, and the lakes that are artificially heated by the power plants in the vicinity of Konin. In the 1990s, he began the ambitious task of conducting comparative studies of the lobelian lakes in Poland. During this decade, he examined all of the approximately 160 Polish lobelian lakes. From 1996 to the present, he has been involved in intensive scientific research in the Bory Tucholskie and Drawieński national parks. In the latter, research on the structure and functioning of lake ecosystems, of which there is a great variety, including dystrophic, mesotrophic, eutrophic, and meromictic, as well as rivers and mixed river-lake systems, has been conducted successfully until now. In December 1990, Professor Kraska became the head of the Department of Water Protection, which he directed until his retirement in 2006. As an esteemed academic teacher, he has supervised 73 master's and six doctoral theses. He is also the co-author of an innovatory curriculum of study entitled Hydrobiology and Water Protection that has been offered since 2003 at the Faculty of Biology. In spite of retiring, he still conducts three lecture courses and offers guidance to both master's and doctoral candidates. In total, he has directed nineteen research grants, of which five were awarded by the State Committee for Scientific Research. The results of this research have been presented in 195 publications to date that have appeared in numerous books, journals, conference proceedings, and reports. In recent years, Professor Kraska has organized or co-organized various, highly popular scientific conferences. He has also participated in numerous limnological conferences both in Poland and internationally, where he has presented both his own research data and that of his team. These conferences were held in Czechoslovakia, Austria, Switzerland, Brazil, France, Australia, Ireland, and India. Professor Kraska is an active member of the Polish Hydrobiological Society. In the 1970s, he served as the secretary of the Poznań Branch, next he was a member of the board and then its vice-chairman, and from 1992 to date he has been chairman of the board of the Poznań Branch. For many years, he has also been a member of the Governing Board of the PHS. Professor Kraska has also been a member of many other scientific societies (including, among others, the Polish Botanical Society, Poznań Society of Friends of Sciences, Societas Internationalis Limnologiae) as well as scientific boards and committees. In addition to the scientific board of the Faculty of Biology at Adam Mickiewicz University, he has also been a member of the scientific board of the Drawieński National Park (on which he still sits), the Bory Tucholskie National Park, the Research Center for Agricultural and Forest Environment of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Committee of Environmental Protection of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has been recognized for his achievements on numerous occasions by the rector of Adam Mickiewicz University. In appreciation for his valuable contribution to the development of hydrobiology in Poland, we would like to dedicate this volume to Professor Kraska. It contains papers focusing on the problems of the functioning and protection of aquatic ecosystems, subjects that he has been very actively engaged with over the past twenty years.
Poznań, May, 2008
The Editors