Watershed Dynamics & Hydrological Extremes
We develop new approaches to characterize water resources, environmental processes and hydrogeological hazards in data scarce systems. We also investigate the potential of cultural landscape restoration for water management and hazard mitigation, and the role of hydrological variability as driver of natural and industrial phenomena, such as floods, fluxes of particulate matters in river basins and the production of energy by means of hydropower plants.
Opportunities
Sumra Mushtaq
Doctoral researcher
Felipe Saavedra
Doctoral researcher
Hsing-Jui Wang
Doctoral researcher
Alumni
Andrea Domin
Master thesis (Technical University of Dresden), January 2019 - September 2019
Lisa Hennig
Master thesis (Technical University of Braunschweig), October 2017 - May 2018
Now at University of Bayreuth, Germany
Zohreh Ghazanchaei
Master thesis (University of Stuttgart), October 2017 - May 2018
Internship (Technical University of Cologne), October 2017 - January 2018
Now at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies - IAMO, Germany
Mechanistic-stochastic and statistical methods for flood hazard assessment
- Applications and further development of the Metastatistical Extreme Value distribution (MEV)
- Further development of the PHysically-based Extreme Value distribution (PHEV!)
- Assessment of the propensity of rivers to extreme floods
Regional analyses of event runoff features and causes
- Large scale analyses of event runoff attributes
- Identification of triggering spatio-temporal atmospheric and catchment conditions
- Causative classification of runoff and flood events
Fluxes of solutes and particulate matters through river basins
- Effects of hydrological events on solute mobilization and delivery
- Effects of hydrological events and landscape patterns on sediment transport
PREDICTED
Propensity of rivers to extreme floods: climate-landscape controls and early detection
(DFG Research Project, grant 421396820, 2019-2022)
DYNAMO
Events as dynamic drivers of pollutant transport, turnover and export in catchments – from monitoring to models
Subproject 3: Effects of hydrological events on solute mobilization and delivery in German river catchments
(Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ PhD college, 2020-2023)
Index:
You could use our publication index for further requests.
2024 (3)
- Saavedra, F., Musolff, A., von Freyberg, J., Merz, R., Knöller, K., Müller, C., Brunner, M., Tarasova, L. (2024):
Winter post-droughts amplify extreme nitrate concentrations in German rivers
Environ. Res. Lett. 19 (2), art. 024007 10.1088/1748-9326/ad19ed - Tarasova, L., Ahrens, B., Hoff, A., Lall, U. (2024):
The value of large-scale climatic indices for monthly forecasting severity of widespread flooding using dilated convolutional neural networks
Earth Future 12 (2), e2023EF003680 10.1029/2023ef003680 - Tarasova, L., Gnann, S., Yang, S., Hartmann, A., Wagener, T. (2024):
Catchment characterization: Current descriptors, knowledge gaps and future opportunities
Earth-Sci. Rev. 252 , art. 104739 10.1016/j.earscirev.2024.104739
2023 (11)
- Basso, S., Merz, R., Tarasova, L., Miniussi, A. (2023):
Extreme flooding controlled by stream network organization and flow regime
Nat. Geosci. 16 (4), 339 - 343 10.1038/s41561-023-01155-w - Bieroza, M., Acharya, S., Benisch, J., ter Borg, R.N., Hallberg, L., Negri, C., Pruitt, A., Pucher, M., Saavedra, F., Staniszewska, K., van’t Veen, S.G.M., Vincent, A., Winter, C., Basu, N.B., Jarvie, H.P., Kirchner, J.W. (2023):
Advances in catchment science, hydrochemistry, and aquatic ecology enabled by high-frequency water quality measurements
Environ. Sci. Technol. 57 (12), 4701 - 4719 10.1021/acs.est.2c07798 - Miniussi, A., Basso, S. (2023):
Files and code for the paper "Unprecedented flooding foretold by stream network organization and flow regime" by S. Basso, R. Merz, L. Tarasova and A. Miniussi
HydroShare 10.4211/hs.a6bcc341413c4fb0b195b25ebe1bb3e6 - Miniussi, A., Merz, R., Kaule, L., Basso, S. (2023):
Identifying discontinuities of flood frequency curves
J. Hydrol. 617, Part B , art. 128989 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2022.128989 - Mushtaq, S., Miniussi, A., Merz, R., Tarasova, L., Marra, F., Basso, S. (2023):
Prediction of extraordinarily high floods emerging from heterogeneous flow generation processes
Geophys. Res. Lett. 50 (20), e2023GL105429 10.1029/2023GL105429 - Tarasova, L. (2023):
Widespread flood severity index time series for Germany [Data set]
Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.7688006 - Tarasova, L., Lun, D., Merz, R., Blöschl, G., Basso, S., Bertola, M., Miniussi, A., Rakovec, O., Samaniego, L., Thober, S., Kumar, R. (2023):
Shifts in flood generation processes exacerbate regional flood anomalies in Europe
Commun. Earth Environ. 4 , art. 49 10.1038/s43247-023-00714-8 - Tarasova, L., Merz, R. (2023):
Großräumige Analyse von Abflussereignissen: Entstehungsprozesse und deren Effekt auf die räumliche und zeitliche Variabilität der Abflussdynamik – Large scale analysis of runoff events: generation processes and their effect on the spatio-temporal variability of runoff event dynamics
Hydrol. Wasserbewirtsch. 67 (5), 275 - 286 10.5675/HyWa_2023.5_4 - Wachholz, A., Dehaspe, J., Ebeling, P., Kumar, R., Musolff, A., Saavedra, F., Winter, C., Yang, S., Graeber, D. (2023):
Stoichiometry on the edge - humans induce strong imbalances of reactive C:N:P ratios in streams
Environ. Res. Lett. 18 (4), art. 044016 10.1088/1748-9326/acc3b1 - Wang, H.-J., Merz, R., Yang, S., Basso, S. (2023):
Inferring heavy tails of flood distributions through hydrograph recession analysis
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 27 (24), 4369 - 4384 10.5194/hess-27-4369-2023 - Wang, H.-J., Merz, R., Yang, S., Tarasova, L., Basso, S. (2023):
Emergence of heavy tails in streamflow distributions: the role of spatial rainfall variability
Adv. Water Resour. 171 , art. 104359 10.1016/j.advwatres.2022.104359
2022 (11)
- Basso, S., Bakken, T.H. (2022):
Editorial: Reconciling small hydropower and ecosystem services in river basins
Front. Environ. Sci. 10 , art. 874065 10.3389/fenvs.2022.874065 - Giani, G., Tarasova, L., Woods, R.A., Rico-Ramirez, M.A. (2022):
An objective time-series-analysis method for rainfall-runoff event identification
Water Resour. Res. 58 (2), e2021WR031283 10.1029/2021WR031283 - Merz, B., Basso, S., Fischer, S., Lun, D., Blöschl, G., Merz, R., Guse, B., Viglione, A., Vorogushyn, S., Macdonald, E., Wietzke, L., Schumann, A. (2022):
Understanding heavy tails of flood peak distributions
Water Resour. Res. 58 (6), e2021WR030506 10.1029/2021WR030506 - Merz, R., Miniussi, A., Basso, S., Petersen, K.-J., Tarasova, L. (2022):
More complex is not necessarily better in large-scale hydrological modelling: A model complexity experiment across the contiguous United States
Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. 103 (8), E1947 - E1967 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0284.1 - Mushtaq, S., Miniussi, A., Merz, R., Basso, S. (2022):
Reliable estimation of high floods: A method to select the most suitable ordinary distribution in the Metastatistical extreme value framework
Adv. Water Resour. 161 , art. 104127 10.1016/j.advwatres.2022.104127 - Peña-Guerrero, M.D., Umirbekov, A., Tarasova, L., Müller, D. (2022):
Comparing the performance of high-resolution global precipitation products across topographic and climatic gradients of Central Asia
Int. J. Climatol. 42 (11), 5554 - 5569 10.1002/joc.7548 - Saavedra, F.A., Musolff, A., von Freyberg, J., Merz, R., Basso, S., Tarasova, L. (2022):
Disentangling scatter in long-term concentration–discharge relationships: the role of event types
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 26 (23), 6227 - 6245 10.5194/hess-26-6227-2022 - Tarasova, L. (2022):
Code: flood generation processes and flood anomalies
Version: 1 Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.6403860 - Tarasova, L. (2022):
Processed data: flood generation processes and flood anomalies [Data set]
Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.6403851 - Winter, C., Tarasova, L., Lutz, S.R., Musolff, A., Kumar, R., Fleckenstein, J.H. (2022):
Explaining the variability in high-frequency nitrate export patterns using long-term hydrological event classification
Water Resour. Res. 58 (1), e2021WR030938 10.1029/2021WR030938 - Yang, S., Büttner, O., Kumar, R., Basso, S., Borchardt, D. (2022):
An analytical framework for determining the ecological risks of wastewater discharges in river networks under climate change
Earth Future 10 (10), e2021EF002601 10.1029/2021EF002601
2021 (3)
- Basso, S., Botter, G., Merz, R., Miniussi, A. (2021):
PHEV! The PHysically-based Extreme Value distribution of river flows
Environ. Res. Lett. 16 (12), art. 124065 10.1088/1748-9326/ac3d59 - Basso, S., Ghazanchaei, Z., Tarasova, L. (2021):
Characterizing hydrograph recessions from satellite-derived soil moisture
Sci. Total Environ. 756 , art. 143469 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143469 - Miniussi, A., Marra, F. (2021):
Estimation of extreme daily precipitation return levels at-site and in ungauged locations using the simplified MEV approach
J. Hydrol. 603, Part B , art. 126946 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.126946
2020 (8)
- Basso, S., Lazzaro, G., Bovo, M., Soulsby, C., Botter, G. (2020):
Water-energy-ecosystem nexus in small run-of-river hydropower: Optimal design and policy
Appl. Energy 280 , art. 115936 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115936 - Merz, R., Tarasova, L., Basso, S. (2020):
The flood cooking book: ingredients and regional flavors of floods across Germany
Environ. Res. Lett. 15 (11), art. 114024 10.1088/1748-9326/abb9dd - Merz, R., Tarasova, L., Basso, S. (2020):
Parameter's controls of distributed catchment models—How much information is in conventional catchment descriptors?
Water Resour. Res. 56 (2), e2019WR026008 10.1029/2019WR026008 - Miniussi, A., Marani, M. (2020):
Estimation of daily rainfall extremes through the Metastatistical Extreme Value Distribution: uncertainty minimization and implications for trend detection
Water Resour. Res. 56 (7), e2019WR026535 10.1029/2019WR026535 - Miniussi, A., Marani, M., Villarini, G. (2020):
Metastatistical Extreme Value Distribution applied to floods across the continental United States
Adv. Water Resour. 136 , art. 103498 10.1016/j.advwatres.2019.103498 - Miniussi, A., Villarini, G., Marani, M. (2020):
Analyses through the Metastatistical Extreme Value distribution identify contributions of Tropical Cyclones to rainfall extremes in the Eastern US
Geophys. Res. Lett. 47 (7), e2020GL087238 10.1029/2020GL087238 - Tarasova, L., Basso, S., Merz, R. (2020):
Transformation of generation processes from small runoff events to large floods
Geophys. Res. Lett. 47 (22), e2020GL090547 10.1029/2020GL090547 - Tarasova, L., Basso, S., Wendi, D., Viglione, A., Kumar, R., Merz, R. (2020):
A process‐based framework to characterize and classify runoff events – the event typology of Germany
Water Resour. Res. 56 (5), e2019WR026951 10.1029/2019WR026951
2019 (1)
- Tarasova, L., Merz, R., Kiss, A., Basso, S., Blöschl, G., Merz, B., Viglione, A., Plötner, S., Guse, B., Schumann, A., Fischer, S., Ahrens, B., Anwar, F., Bárdossy, A., Bühler, P., Haberlandt, U., Kreibich, H., Krug, A., Lun, D., Müller‐Thomy, H., Pidoto, R., Primo, C., Seidel, J., Vorogushyn, S., Wietzke, L. (2019):
Causative classification of river flood events
Wiley Interdiscip. Rev.-Water 6 (4), e1353 10.1002/wat2.1353
2018 (3)
- Müller, C., Musolff, A., Strachauer, U., Brauns, M., Tarasova, L., Merz, R., Knöller, K. (2018):
Tomography of anthropogenic nitrate contribution along a mesoscale river
Sci. Total Environ. 615 , 773 - 783 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.09.297 - Tarasova, L., Basso, S., Poncelet, C., Merz, R. (2018):
Exploring controls on rainfall‐runoff events: 2. Regional patterns and spatial controls of event characteristics in Germany
Water Resour. Res. 54 (10), 7688 - 7710 10.1029/2018WR022588 - Tarasova, L., Basso, S., Zink, M., Merz, R. (2018):
Exploring controls on rainfall‐runoff events: 1. Time series‐based event separation and temporal dynamics of event runoff response in Germany
Water Resour. Res. 54 (10), 7711 - 7732 10.1029/2018WR022587
2016 (1)
- Tarasova, L., Knoche, M., Dietrich, J., Merz, R. (2016):
Effects of input discretization, model complexity, and calibration strategy on model performance in a data-scarce glacierized catchment in Central Asia
Water Resour. Res. 52 (6), 4674 - 4699 10.1002/2015WR018551