Research Foci

Assessing the influence of global change and land use changes on regional climate,  water availability, flood and drought risks

We apply dynamical downscaling methods using 3-dimensional regional climate models to generate regional climate scenarios and perform hydrological simulations to assess the impact of climate change and land use changes on water availability and on the frequency and intensity of extreme events.

Understanding the interactions between the atmosphere, land surface and terrestrial hydrospere

We analyze the meteorological, climatological, and hydrological processes using mobile and stationary observation equipment and complex numerical hydrometeorological models on regional and local scales.

Developing of hydrometeorological Decision Support Systems for sustainable water management

We design near real time, model and satellite based water balance monitoring systems, develop economically optimized cultivation strategies under hydrological constraints, and assess the impact of irrigation strategies on the water balance.

Our specific research questions are:

• Closing the regional water cycle: development of fully coupled atmosphere hydrosphere model systems
• Observation and distributed modeling of joint water and energy fluxes 
• Quantification of spatio-temporal precipitation variability in complex terrain and poorly gauged regions
• Experimental hydrological process analysis using microwave devices (precipitation analysis) and stable isotopes (water origin and process separation)