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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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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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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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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…
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Isotope seasonality in soils
In last weeks #waterwednesday I briefly explained the reason behind the seasonality effect of stable water isotope composition. When water infiltrates into the soil, this signature is first preserved. However, as the water trickels further down, it mixes with preexisting water, slowly dampening the signature. This post is part of my water science communication series…
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How heavy is rain? Basics of stable water isotopes
Winter rain is lighter than that in summer. Does not make sense? Yes, it does! The cause are stable water isotopes. Water is made up of 2 types of atoms: Hydrogen (H) and Oxygen (O). These Atoms come in different varietys, also called isotopes. The isotopes of water exist in two weight levels: light 1H…
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On the origin of preferential flowpaths
In some soils over 95% of infiltrated rainwater travels through less than .5% of the total soil volume. The reason? Macropores! In last weeks post I explained the basic concept of how water moves through hillslope soils with the most important feature being “water highways”, scientifically called preferential flowpaths or macropores. These pathways can have…
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How water flows on hillslopes
In line with my PhD project on subsurface stormflow I want to share some basics on hillslope hydrology: When it rains on hillslopes, water can flow over land to the next stream or infiltrate into the soil. In the soil it can take two ways. It can move either through the soil matrix or use…