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🌾Protecting Harvests Part 1 – Aquaponics 🐟🥬
🌾🌡 Climate Change & Agriculture With climate change leading to more hydrologic droughts (see in this WaterWednesday) and increased surface drying, agriculture becomes more and more threatened. Some crops cant go long without water, thus resulting in crop losses, endangering food security. While irrigation can help, groundwater, which is often used to water plants during dry…
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🌊Flood Resilience Part 2: Sponge Cities 🧽🏙
🛣🏜 Cities, aka sealed asphalt deserts Our cities are currently build to drain rainwater FAST! With surface sealing by asphalted streets and concrete houses, rainwater is mostly directly converted to runoff. This runoff is then channeled into sewers, which (in case of a mixed sewer) should guide it to a wastewater treatment plant. With increases…
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🌊Flood Resilience Part 1: River Restoration
Climate change and floods According to climate projections, as the climate crisis worsens, the global hydrologic cycle will undergo significant changes, including increased flooding risks. While arid regions will become even drier, wet areas will become even wetter. In mid-latitudes, such as central Europe and continental USA, the overall annual precipitation is expected to remain…
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Isotope Hydrology Course
Last week I took part in the “Isotope Hydrology” course from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. While it gave me an artificial jetlag by attending the course virtually from Germany, it was definitely worth the sleep deprevation. The course featured outstanding instructors like Jeff McDonnell, Ciaran Harman and Scott Jasechko to name just a few.…
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EGU 23 Poster Download & Animations
Poster Download Animations Vertical flow Preferential flow Lateral flow
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Conquering Droughts Part 2: (Urban) Rainwater Harvesting
How humans influence droughts Droughts come in different “natural” stages and severities (see last newsletter: 🌧 meterological drought, 🌾 agricultural drought, 🚱 hydrological drought), but humans can exacerbate them. This effect is called “anthropogenic drought”, being defined by AghaKouchak and others (2021) as the enhancement of agricultural and especially hydrological drought through human behaviour. As…
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Video: How we analyse our soil samples
In my blog-post from February I showed how we take soil samples. Here is how we measure them:
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Conquering Droughts Part 1: Artificial Aquifer Recharge
Preface: Climate change adaptation is only effecive when also commiting to climate change mitigation Definitions: aquifer = groundwater body Droughts and Climate Change Droughts are among the most devastating consequences of climate change, affecting millions of people around the world. Droughts occur when there is unusually low rainfall or water scarcity over an extended period…
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WaterWednesday will become a newsletter
In the last few weeks I realized that I really enjoy communicating water science, so I decided to make #waterwednesday a bi-weekly newsletter. This newsletter will focus on the water-climate change nexus and their solutions. I believe that climate change and water resources are intricately linked and that addressing these issues together is critical. I…
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Meterological Drought in Southwest Germany
Recently we have heard a lot about the current drought in Spain and Italy. Rainfalls are missing and rivers are dry. But how are we doing in Baden-Wurttemberg? While its definitely not as severe as in other parts of Europe, some areas are also missing lots of winter precipitation. The plot shows how much water…
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Why climate change matters for Hydrology
In July 2021, my grandmother’s house was affected by the massive Eifel/Ahr flood. In the following week, I spent the whole day from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night in the mud masses that were in the basement and first floor. At my grandmother’s house alone, in the days after…
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Preferential flowpaths change soilwater isotopic composition
A review by Mathias Sprenger and others in 2016 described how preferential flowpaths alter the iotopic seasonality signature in soils. When these pathways exist (see my post on macropores), young, topsoil water is directly added to soil layers which have a different or dampened signature. This causes sharp deviations which stick out of the otherwise…