Water Above- and Below-Ground

Abstract

Water above and below ground

In this seminar we explore the strong ties between above- and below-ground waters and how subsurface water can resurface, even at short time scales. This can happen through root water uptake and transpiration, where this water is transported back to the atmosphere. On the other hand, it can also resurface as subsurface storm flow where this water then contributes to flood events. Studying these processes involves a combination of field experimentation, field observations and laboratory analysis, and is fundamentally interdisciplinary and collaborative.

In the first part of this talk, we explore cross-scale experimental approaches to determining subsurface stormflow including the monitoring of flow captured in trenches but also the spatially distributed recording of groundwater dynamics in the riparian zone during both natural events and injection experiments. These approaches are coupled with water chemistry and temperature both in hillslope subsurface flow and in riparian groundwater and stream water.

In the second part of the talk, we will discuss how semi-arid forests rely on deep vadose zone water to sustain transpiration during periods of drought. We quantify the spatiotemporal dynamics of rock moisture held in the deep vadose zone in a montane catchment of the Rocky Mountains. We couple geophysical techniques to investigate the subsurface moisture storage with aboveground monitoring techniques to quantify transpiration rates.

Bios

Theresa Blume is a Group Leader at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany. She is the Speaker of the Terrestrial Environmental Observatory in Northeast Germany which is part of the TERENO Network, the German equivalent of the CZOs. She also leads a large research consortium funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation) focusing on the investigation of subsurface stormflow. She is Chief Executive Editor of the EGU journal HESS (Hydrology and Earth System Sciences).  She is interested in landscape hydrology starting from how landscape evolution has shaped and still controls today’s hydrological processes, over runoff and flood generation, to global change impacts on forest hydrology. This includes extensive and innovative monitoring approaches aiming to shed light on the dynamic patterns of vertical and lateral hydrological connectivity.

Holly Barnard is a Professor of Geography and Senior Fellow of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado - Boulder. The ultimate goal of Barnard's research is to improve our knowledge of how changes in climate and land-use will affect forest ecosystems and water resources. She investigates how forest processes affect water flow dynamics and pathways in soil and streams, and conversely, how water flow paths affect ecological function in mountainous areas.