Cadagno
Meromittico

Cadagno Meromittico is a project that aims to promote Lake Cadagno, located in the Piora Valley, as the scientific patrimony of the Canton of Ticino through a multidisciplinary scientific outreach campaign.

This project was developed with the aim of verifying the effectiveness of a co-design method between visual designers and scientists, identified during the research "Il ruolo del design nella visualizzazione scientifica" (BA thesis in Visual Communication SUPSI) and seeks to promote and enhance scientific knowledge about Lake Cadagno, located in Val Piora (Ticino, Switzerland).


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Context
Lake Cadagno is one of the most studied Alpine lakes in Canton Ticino. The scientific interest in Lake Cadagno is due to the presence of two rare phenomena.
 

1. The first concerns the permanent stratification of the water, known as crenogenic meromixis, a condition that affects the physical-chemical and biological composition of the lake, generating three layers that host different forms of life. The deepest layer of the lake (monimolimnion) is an anoxic environment with anaerobic sulphur-reducing bacteria (SRB: sulphate-reducing bacteria); the middle layer (chemocline) is home to special anaerobic but photosynthetic bacteria (Purple sulfur bacteria (PSB) and Green Sulfur Bacteria (GSB); and the upper part of the lake (mixolimnion) is home to fish, algae and other life forms common in Alpine lakes.
   
   
2. The second peculiarity that makes Cadagno so exceptional is a particular phenomenon that occurs in the bacterial belt that lives in the transition zone between the upper and lower layers of the lake (chemoclinium), where a particular species of PSB, called Chromatium okenii is able to mix considerable volumes of water thanks to its active flagellar motion, not by stirring them directly with its flagella but by grouping itself in search of light in a narrow zone near the oxygen diffusion front. This stirring, known as bioconvention, has never before been observed in nature outside Lake Cadagno.
   
   

2021

SUPSI

Team

visual design
Max Fonseca
thesis supervisor
Carla Langella, Ph.D.
scientific advice
Nicola Storelli

Website, Fold brochure, Instagram cards, F4 poster, gadgets (bookmark, postcards)