Interaction of climate, vegetation, and water age in catchments across scales and climate zones

Poster (2019)

Authors

Stefanie R. Lutz Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ
Anushka Weerasingha Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ
Miriam Coenders-Gerrits Water Resources - CEG
M. Hrachowitz Water Resources - CEG
Research Group
Water Resources (CEG) (TU Delft)
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Published Date

2019

Language

English

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Faculty

Civil Engineering & Geosciences

Department

Water Management

Research Group

Water Resources

Abstract

Recent studies have demonstrated a direct relation between climate characteristics and vegetation in catchments. For example, plants appear to develop a root system that allows both optimal growth and resistance against region-specific droughts (Gao et al., 2014; Ho et al., 2005). As climatic conditions also affect the way catchments store and release water (i.e., the transit times), we expect a direct relation between vegetation and transit times. To test this hypothesis, we have established a dataset of water balance and stable water isotope data across more than 50 catchments in various climate zones, which will be further expanded over the course of the project.
This dataset allows for determining root zone storage capacities and transit time metrics such as the young water fraction (Kirchner, 2016) across catchment scales and climate zones. We will present how transit time metrics vary as a function of root zone storage capacities and how this can be related to catchment and vegetation characteristics and climatic conditions. The results will help understand how changing vegetation cover due to climate and land use change might affect catchment water storage and release in future.

We see a vast potential of isotope studies across diverse catchments. We are thus calling for a community effort to provide streamflow isotope data from previous work in a unified framework as a basis for further global analyses using stable water isotopes.