Thematic Field 1: Quality in the water cycle
Understanding processes: water cycle and water quality
Speaker: Thomas Berendonk (TUD), Markus Weitere (UFZ/TUD)
Thematic field 1 of the Center for Advanced Water Research focuses on key processes and matter fluxes in the entire catchment (urban spaces, agricultural land, groundwater, reservoirs etc.), necessary to secure and sustain the quality and volume of water available to consumers and to facilitate the sustainable development of ecosystem processes and functions in all domains of the water cycle.
The scientists at the Center for Advanced Water Research cover all the necessary requirements to address the described challenges with a unique combination of competences and research infrastructures:
- Observatories with defined boundary conditions for long-term detailed studies (jointly-operated observatories within TERENO),
- Infrastructure for the experimental analysis of causal relationships under laboratory and field conditions (mobile mesocosms, S2-laboratories and drainage channel facilities, well-equipped field sites),
- Expertise on relevant stressors in hydrology, river ecology, urban water management, water chemistry, ecotoxicology and antibiotic-resistant pathogens) and
- Competences in integrated modeling of the underlying ecological, biogeochemical and hydrological processes.
Current projects:
- IRTG-PhD: Identification of hot spots and spread of antibiotic resistance genes using mechanistic hydro-ecological modeling approach in river networks
- IRTG-PhD: Analysis and model-based description of the water and matter flow networks in mesoscale watersheds characterized by mixed rural/urban land-use
- DFG: RainTracer - Rain as a groundwater tracer
- ArKoNaVera – Supraregional concept for the protection of the freshwater pearl mussels and painter's mussel
- DFG-NSFC Sino-German Cooperation Group "Modelling Platform Prototype for Environmental System Dynamics - Poyang Lake Basin"
- BMBF-Project "Managing Water for Urban Catchments" in Chaohu, China
- Project "Urban Water Resources Management" within the Helmholtz Water-Network - Workpackage 3 "Limnology" (Self-purification and antibiotic resistences)
- UFZ Integrated Project „Healthy Aquatic Ecosystems"
- DFG-Priority Programme DynaTrait within the subprojects
1) Effect of trait variability on the dynamics of coupled, bi-trophic plankton - biofilm systems
2) The determinants of algal trait dynamics in phytoplankton communities over vertical, seasonal, and inter-annual gradients - GIZ - Project "Adaption of urban water sector in Lima to climate change with regard to the private sector"
- PhD-Projekt "Biomanipulation for eutrophication control in running waters: top-down effects on benthic key stone grazers"
- PhD-Projekt "Evolution and spread of antibiotic resistance genes in running water systems"
Infrastructures:
Completed projects:
- BMBF-Project "InternationaleWasserAllianz Sachsen (IWAS)"
- BMBF-Project "CLEAN"
- BMBF-Project "Enhanced Natural Attunation von MTBE"
- ESF-Project "Effects of pesticide on biotic decolmation"