
SUDOCQU
Soil moisture’s Uncertain influence on riparian DOC quantity and Quality
June 2024 - November 2027
Context
The SUDOCQU project will help solving real-world problems of water security related to potential increases in dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations and changes in its chemical composition in source waters.
Project goals
SUDOCQU aims to:
(i) Improve our understanding of DOC mobilization processes in temperate forests headwaters
(ii) Determine subsequent implications for surface water chemistry across temporal scales, including modelled changes associated with future climate, that can help decision-makers of the drinking water industry downstream in applying adaptation strategies in their processes to cope with those changes.
Methodology
We will achieve these goals by integrating vertical and topographic heterogeneity in soil moisture, as well as DOC quantity and quality, within the riparian zone of the Rappbode temperate forest catchment (2.5 km2). The study site, located in the Harz Mountains, Germany, serves as a headwater to the Rappbode Reservoir—the largest drinking water reservoir in Germany, supplying over 1 million people.
Existing field infrastructure at the Rappbode catchment will be complemented with a network of soil moisture sensors for soil water content quantification, and suction cups for soil water extraction and characterization. The rainfall-runoff model PERSiST will be used to run future simulations of soil moisture based on climate scenarios and the results will serve to infer potential changes in stream DOC quantity and quality.
Project partners
The project is led by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig with collaborators from the Spanish National Research Council and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ
Department of Hydrogeology
(José L. J. Ledesma, Andreas Musolff, Paul Burkhardt)
Department of Analytical Chemistry (Oliver Lechtenfeld)
National Museum of Natural Sciences-
Spanish National Research Council (MNCN-CSIC)
Department of Biogeochemistry and Microbial Ecology (José L. J. Ledesma)
Centre for Advanced Studies of Blanes-
Spanish National Research Council (CEAB-CSIC)
Department of Continental Ecology (Susana Bernal)
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)
Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment (Martyn Futter)
Funding
SUDOCQU is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG

Contact
PI: José L. J. Ledesma (UFZ and MNCN-CSIC) - jose.ledesma@ufz.de
Co-PI: Andreas Musolff (UFZ) - andreas.musolff@ufz.de
PhD student: Paul Burkhardt (UFZ) - paul-david.burkhardt@ufz.de