Viable forests make an important contribution to drinking water suppliers through their filter function. However, climate change may cause water stress and hence hampers viability of forests which may reduce the filter function. Therefore, a quantification of future water stress is important for planning future drinking water supply, but also for ecological reasons, for example, vulnerability of trees to pest infestation increases with water stress.
The overall aim of this MSc-thesis is to estimate water stress induced by climate change at a forested site with two different tree species (beech and spruce) and examine differences between the two tree species.
Climate change impact will be analysed with scenario-based soil hydrological simulations using bias bias-corrected climate projections.
Robin Schwemmle, Markus Weiler
RoGeR is available at https://roger.readthedocs.io/en/latest/.
The modelling experiment can be conducted at the following two sites:
- Laegeren, Switzerland (more information is available at Brinkmann et al., 2018)
- Hartheim, Germany (https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/444110369; further information is available upon request)
Robin Schwemmle robin.schwemmle@hydrology.uni-freiburg.de
advanced programming skills, knowledge in the programming language Python
English (or German)
Clark, M. P., Wilby, R. L., Gutmann, E. D., Vano, J. A., Gangopadhyay, S., Wood, A. W., Fowler, H. J., Prudhomme, C., Arnold, J. R., and Brekke, L. D.: Characterizing Uncertainty of the Hydrologic Impacts of Climate Change, Current Climate Change Reports, 2, 55-64, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40641-016-0034-x, 2016.
Brinkmann, N., Seeger, S., Weiler, M., Buchmann, N., Eugster, W., and Kahmen, A.: Employing stable isotopes to determine the residence times of soil water and the temporal origin of water taken up by Fagus sylvatica and Picea abies in a temperate forest, New Phytol, 219, 1300-1313, [https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.15255,](https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.15255,) 2018.
Steinbrich, A., Leistert, H., and Weiler, M.: Model-based quantification of runoff generation processes at high spatial and temporal resolution, Environmental Earth Sciences, 75, 1423, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-016-6234-9, 2016.