Featured Catchment

Featured catchment: Water Towers of Mesopotamia: Snow feeding the cultural heritage

EGU Guest blogger October 28, 2020

An aerial view from the water towers of Mesopotamia Credit: Celal Borazan, 08.03.2013 Palandöken Mountain, Erzurum ©️ 2020 TSMS

Importance and challenges of snow modelling in Turkey Snow and glaciers in the high mountains play a crucial role for 1.6 billion people living downstream of mountainous areas. Thus, understanding snow dynamics is crucial for downstream irrigation, hydropower, flood control etc. In eastern Anatolia, Turkey (the mean elevation is around 1140 m), much of the precipitation falls as snow and is retain ...[Read More]

Featured Catchment: The Weierbach – Yet another temperate forested headwater?

EGU Guest blogger July 29, 2020

Characteristic subsurface structure of the Weierbach regolith from a close-by road cut (Photo: Jérôme Juilleret)

Slate bedrock, an often overlooked system At first sight, the Weierbach catchment may seem unspectacular. It is indeed a small (42 ha) forested headwater catchment, located at mid-latitude in a low mountain range (450-500 m a.s.l.). However, when you take a closer look, and particularly below the surface, the Weierbach is a truly exciting eco-hydrological system. Located in the Luxembourgish Arden ...[Read More]

Featured catchment series: The San Carlos Catchment in northeast Costa Rica, a multi-scale hydrological observatory to leapfrog data scarcity in the tropics

EGU Guest blogger February 19, 2020

The San Carlos Catchment in northeast Costa Rica, photograph taken at 660 m a.s.l. shows the active volcano Arenal and the catchment boundary formed by the hydropower reservoir Lake Arenal (dam is visible in the foreground), one of the sites for isotope and water quality monitoring in rivers. Photo credit: Christian Birkel

Tropical ecosystems are of major hydrological importance for regional and global climate systems and are characterized by greater energy inputs, higher rate of change and dynamics compared to other hydroclimatic regions. Nowadays, the anthropogenic influence in the climate crisis exerts enormous pressure on tropical hydrological systems. This growing pressure affects water quality and quantity, wh ...[Read More]

Featured catchment series: The Rio Vauz catchment – long-term hydrologic observations in the Dolomites

Giulia Zuecco November 20, 2019

The high-elevation Rio Vauz Catchment in the Dolomites (Italy). Alpine grassland covers the lower part of the catchment (below 2200 m a.s.l.), while vertical rock cliffs are typical of higher elevations. Photo credit: Giulia Zuecco.

Dolomitic landscapes are characterized by vertical rock cliffs and soil-mantled hillslopes originated from glacial or colluvial deposits, which hide a complex subsurface aquifer due to the permeability of the dolomitic rocks. To improve the understanding of the hydrological functioning of such complex hydrogeological systems, the hydrology group of the Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture ...[Read More]