@phdthesis{Zhou2024, author = {Zhou, Xiangqian}, title = {Modeling of spatially distributed nitrate transport to investigate the effects of drought and river restoration in the Bode catchment, Central Germany}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-62105}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-621059}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {VIII, 168}, year = {2024}, abstract = {The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) has identified river morphological alteration and diffuse pollution as the two main pressures affecting water bodies in Europe at the catchment scale. Consequently, river restoration has become a priority to achieve the WFD's objective of good ecological status. However, little is known about the effects of stream morphological changes, such as re-meandering, on in-stream nitrate retention at the river network scale. Therefore, catchment nitrate modeling is necessary to guide the implementation of spatially targeted and cost-effective mitigation measures. Meanwhile, Germany, like many other regions in central Europe, has experienced consecutive summer droughts from 2015-2018, resulting in significant changes in river nitrate concentrations in various catchments. However, the mechanistic exploration of catchment nitrate responses to changing weather conditions is still lacking. Firstly, a fully distributed, process-based catchment Nitrate model (mHM-Nitrate) was used, which was properly calibrated and comprehensively evaluated at numerous spatially distributed nitrate sampling locations. Three calibration schemes were designed, taking into account land use, stream order, and mean nitrate concentrations, and they varied in spatial coverage but used data from the same period (2011-2019). The model performance for discharge was similar among the three schemes, with Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) scores ranging from 0.88 to 0.92. However, for nitrate concentrations, scheme 2 outperformed schemes 1 and 3 when compared to observed data from eight gauging stations. This was likely because scheme 2 incorporated a diverse range of data, including low discharge values and nitrate concentrations, and thus provided a better representation of within-catchment heterogenous. Therefore, the study suggests that strategically selecting gauging stations that reflect the full range of within-catchment heterogeneity is more important for calibration than simply increasing the number of stations. Secondly, the mHM-Nitrate model was used to reveal the causal relations between sequential droughts and nitrate concentration in the Bode catchment (3200 km2) in central Germany, where stream nitrate concentrations exhibited contrasting trends from upstream to downstream reaches. The model was evaluated using data from six gauging stations, reflecting different levels of runoff components and their associated nitrate-mixing from upstream to downstream. Results indicated that the mHM-Nitrate model reproduced dynamics of daily discharge and nitrate concentration well, with Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency ≥ 0.73 for discharge and Kling-Gupta Efficiency ≥ 0.50 for nitrate concentration at most stations. Particularly, the spatially contrasting trends of nitrate concentration were successfully captured by the model. The decrease of nitrate concentration in the lowland area in drought years (2015-2018) was presumably due to (1) limited terrestrial export loading (ca. 40\% lower than that of normal years 2004-2014), and (2) increased in-stream retention efficiency (20\% higher in summer within the whole river network). From a mechanistic modelling perspective, this study provided insights into spatially heterogeneous flow and nitrate dynamics and effects of sequential droughts, which shed light on water-quality responses to future climate change, as droughts are projected to be more frequent. Thirdly, this study investigated the effects of stream restoration via re-meandering on in-stream nitrate retention at network-scale in the well-monitored Bode catchment. The mHM-Nitrate model showed good performance in reproducing daily discharge and nitrate concentrations, with median Kling-Gupta values of 0.78 and 0.74, respectively. The mean and standard deviation of gross nitrate retention efficiency, which accounted for both denitrification and assimilatory uptake, were 5.1 ± 0.61\% and 74.7 ± 23.2\% in winter and summer, respectively, within the stream network. The study found that in the summer, denitrification rates were about two times higher in lowland sub-catchments dominated by agricultural lands than in mountainous sub-catchments dominated by forested areas, with median ± SD of 204 ± 22.6 and 102 ± 22.1 mg N m-2 d-1, respectively. Similarly, assimilatory uptake rates were approximately five times higher in streams surrounded by lowland agricultural areas than in those in higher-elevation, forested areas, with median ± SD of 200 ± 27.1 and 39.1 ± 8.7 mg N m-2 d-1, respectively. Therefore, restoration strategies targeting lowland agricultural areas may have greater potential for increasing nitrate retention. The study also found that restoring stream sinuosity could increase net nitrate retention efficiency by up to 25.4 ± 5.3\%, with greater effects seen in small streams. These results suggest that restoration efforts should consider augmenting stream sinuosity to increase nitrate retention and decrease nitrate concentrations at the catchment scale.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Schmidt2024, author = {Schmidt, Lena Katharina}, title = {Altered hydrological and sediment dynamics in high-alpine areas - Exploring the potential of machine-learning for estimating past and future changes}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-62330}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-623302}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xxi, 129}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Climate change fundamentally transforms glaciated high-alpine regions, with well-known cryospheric and hydrological implications, such as accelerating glacier retreat, transiently increased runoff, longer snow-free periods and more frequent and intense summer rainstorms. These changes affect the availability and transport of sediments in high alpine areas by altering the interaction and intensity of different erosion processes and catchment properties. Gaining insight into the future alterations in suspended sediment transport by high alpine streams is crucial, given its wide-ranging implications, e.g. for flood damage potential, flood hazard in downstream river reaches, hydropower production, riverine ecology and water quality. However, the current understanding of how climate change will impact suspended sediment dynamics in these high alpine regions is limited. For one, this is due to the scarcity of measurement time series that are long enough to e.g. infer trends. On the other hand, it is difficult - if not impossible - to develop process-based models, due to the complexity and multitude of processes involved in high alpine sediment dynamics. Therefore, knowledge has so far been confined to conceptual models (which do not facilitate deriving concrete timings or magnitudes for individual catchments) or qualitative estimates ('higher export in warmer years') that may not be able to capture decreases in sediment export. Recently, machine-learning approaches have gained in popularity for modeling sediment dynamics, since their black box nature tailors them to the problem at hand, i.e. relatively well-understood input and output data, linked by very complex processes. Therefore, the overarching aim of this thesis is to estimate sediment export from the high alpine {\"O}tztal valley in Tyrol, Austria, over decadal timescales in the past and future - i.e. timescales relevant to anthropogenic climate change. This is achieved by informing, extending, evaluating and applying a quantile regression forest (QRF) approach, i.e. a nonparametric, multivariate machine-learning technique based on random forest. The first study included in this thesis aimed to understand present sediment dynamics, i.e. in the period with available measurements (up to 15 years). To inform the modeling setup for the two subsequent studies, this study identified the most important predictors, areas within the catchments and time periods. To that end, water and sediment yields from three nested gauges in the upper {\"O}tztal, Vent, S{\"o}lden and Tumpen (98 to almost 800 km² catchment area, 930 to 3772 m a.s.l.) were analyzed for their distribution in space, their seasonality and spatial differences therein, and the relative importance of short-term events. The findings suggest that the areas situated above 2500 m a.s.l., containing glacier tongues and recently deglaciated areas, play a pivotal role in sediment generation across all sub-catchments. In contrast, precipitation events were relatively unimportant (on average, 21 \% of annual sediment yield was associated to precipitation events). Thus, the second and third study focused on the Vent catchment and its sub-catchment above gauge Vernagt (11.4 and 98 km², 1891 to 3772 m a.s.l.), due to their higher share of areas above 2500 m. Additionally, they included discharge, precipitation and air temperature (as well as their antecedent conditions) as predictors. The second study aimed to estimate sediment export since the 1960s/70s at gauges Vent and Vernagt. This was facilitated by the availability of long records of the predictors, discharge, precipitation and air temperature, and shorter records (four and 15 years) of turbidity-derived sediment concentrations at the two gauges. The third study aimed to estimate future sediment export until 2100, by applying the QRF models developed in the second study to pre-existing precipitation and temperature projections (EURO-CORDEX) and discharge projections (physically-based hydroclimatological and snow model AMUNDSEN) for the three representative concentration pathways RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. The combined results of the second and third study show overall increasing sediment export in the past and decreasing export in the future. This suggests that peak sediment is underway or has already passed - unless precipitation changes unfold differently than represented in the projections or changes in the catchment erodibility prevail and override these trends. Despite the overall future decrease, very high sediment export is possible in response to precipitation events. This two-fold development has important implications for managing sediment, flood hazard and riverine ecology. This thesis shows that QRF can be a very useful tool to model sediment export in high-alpine areas. Several validations in the second study showed good performance of QRF and its superiority to traditional sediment rating curves - especially in periods that contained high sediment export events, which points to its ability to deal with threshold effects. A technical limitation of QRF is the inability to extrapolate beyond the range of values represented in the training data. We assessed the number and severity of such out-of-observation-range (OOOR) days in both studies, which showed that there were few OOOR days in the second study and that uncertainties associated with OOOR days were small before 2070 in the third study. As the pre-processed data and model code have been made publically available, future studies can easily test further approaches or apply QRF to further catchments.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Hartmann2024, author = {Hartmann, Anne}, title = {Tracing the evolution of hillslope structure and hillslope hydrological response over ten millennia in two glacial forefields of different geology}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-62862}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-628629}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {XVIII, 138, XLIV}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Assessing the impact of global change on hydrological systems is one of the greatest hydrological challenges of our time. Changes in land cover, land use, and climate have an impact on water quantity, quality, and temporal availability. There is a widespread consensus that, given the far-reaching effects of global change, hydrological systems can no longer be viewed as static in their structure; instead, they must be regarded as entire ecosystems, wherein hydrological processes interact and coevolve with biological, geomorphological, and pedological processes. To accurately predict the hydrological response under the impact of global change, it is essential to understand this complex coevolution. The knowledge of how hydrological processes, in particular the formation of subsurface (preferential) flow paths, evolve within this coevolution and how they feed back to the other processes is still very limited due to a lack of observational data. At the hillslope scale, this intertwined system of interactions is known as the hillslope feedback cycle. This thesis aims to enhance our understanding of the hillslope feedback cycle by studying the coevolution of hillslope structure and hillslope hydrological response. Using chronosequences of moraines in two glacial forefields developed from siliceous and calcareous glacial till, the four studies shed light on the complex coevolution of hydrological, biological, and structural hillslope properties, as well as subsurface hydrological flow paths over an evolutionary period of 10 millennia in these two contrasting geologies. The findings indicate that the contrasting properties of siliceous and calcareous parent materials lead to variations in soil structure, permeability, and water storage. As a result, different plant species and vegetation types are favored on siliceous versus calcareous parent material, leading to diverse ecosystems with distinct hydrological dynamics. The siliceous parent material was found to show a higher activity level in driving the coevolution. The soil pH resulting from parent material weathering emerges as a crucial factor, influencing vegetation development, soil formation, and consequently, hydrology. The acidic weathering of the siliceous parent material favored the accumulation of organic matter, increasing the soils' water storage capacity and attracting acid-loving shrubs, which further promoted organic matter accumulation and ultimately led to podsolization after 10 000 years. Tracer experiments revealed that the subsurface flow path evolution was influenced by soil and vegetation development, and vice versa. Subsurface flow paths changed from vertical, heterogeneous matrix flow to finger-like flow paths over a few hundred years, evolving into macropore flow, water storage, and lateral subsurface flow after several thousand years. The changes in flow paths among younger age classes were driven by weathering processes altering soil structure, as well as by vegetation development and root activity. In the older age class, the transition to more water storage and lateral flow was attributed to substantial organic matter accumulation and ongoing podsolization. The rapid vertical water transport in the finger-like flow paths, along with the conductive sandy material, contributed to podsolization and thus to the shift in the hillslope hydrological response. In contrast, the calcareous site possesses a high pH buffering capacity, creating a neutral to basic environment with relatively low accumulation of dead organic matter, resulting in a lower water storage capacity and the establishment of predominantly grass vegetation. The coevolution was found to be less dynamic over the millennia. Similar to the siliceous site, significant changes in subsurface flow paths occurred between the young age classes. However, unlike the siliceous site, the subsurface flow paths at the calcareous site only altered in shape and not in direction. Tracer experiments showed that flow paths changed from vertical, heterogeneous matrix flow to vertical, finger-like flow paths after a few hundred to thousands of years, which was driven by root activities and weathering processes. Despite having a finer soil texture, water storage at the calcareous site was significantly lower than at the siliceous site, and water transport remained primarily rapid and vertical, contributing to the flourishing of grass vegetation. The studies elucidated that changes in flow paths are predominantly shaped by the characteristics of the parent material and its weathering products, along with their complex interactions with initial water flow paths and vegetation development. Time, on the other hand, was not found to be a primary factor in describing the evolution of the hydrological response. This thesis makes a valuable contribution to closing the gap in the observations of the coevolution of hydrological processes within the hillslope feedback cycle, which is important to improve predictions of hydrological processes in changing landscapes. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary studies in addressing the hydrological challenges arising from global change.}, language = {en} } @misc{MiechielsenSchmidt2024, author = {Miechielsen, Milena and Schmidt, Katja}, title = {Leitfaden f{\"u}r die Erstellung von kommunalen Aktionspl{\"a}nen zur Steigerung der urbanen Klimaresilienz}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-63057}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-630578}, pages = {85}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Die durch Klimaver{\"a}nderungen hervorgerufenen Auswirkungen auf Menschen und Umwelt werden immer offensichtlicher: Neben der gesundheitlichen Gef{\"a}hrdung durch Hitzewellen, die deutschlandweit seit einigen Jahren eine steigende Rate an Todes- und Krankheitsf{\"a}llen zur Folge hat sind in den letzten Jahren zunehmend Starkniederschl{\"a}ge und daraus resultierenden {\"U}berschwemmungen bzw. Sturzfluten aufgetreten. Diese ziehen zum Teil immensen wirtschaftlichen Sch{\"a}den, aber auch Beeintr{\"a}chtigungen f{\"u}r die menschliche Gesundheit - sowohl physisch als auch psychisch - sowie gar Todesopfer nach sich. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass diese Extremwetterereignisse zuk{\"u}nftiger noch h{\"a}ufiger auftreten werden. Um die Bev{\"o}lkerung besser vor den Folgen dieser Wetterextreme zu sch{\"u}tzen, sind neben Klimaschutzmaßnahmen auch Vorsorge- und Anpassungsmaßnahmen zur Steigerung der kommunalen Klimaresilienz dringend notwendig. Dazu bedarf es einerseits einer Auseinandersetzung mit den eigenen kommunalen Risiken und daraus resultierenden Handlungsbedarfen, und andererseits eines interdisziplin{\"a}ren, querschnittsorientierten und prozessorientierten Planens und Handelns. Aktionspl{\"a}ne sollen diese beiden Aspekte b{\"u}ndeln. In den letzten Jahren sind einige kommunale und kommunen{\"u}bergreifende (Hitze-) aufgestellt worden. Diese unterscheiden sich jedoch in ihrem Inhalt und Umfang zum Teil erheblich. Mit dem vorliegenden Leitfaden soll eine effektive Hilfestellung geschaffen werden, um Kommunen bzw. die kommunale Verwaltung auf dem Weg zum eigenen Aktionsplan zu unterst{\"u}tzt. Dabei fokussiert der Leitfaden auf die Herausforderungen, die sich durch vermehrte Hitze- und Starkregenereignisse ergeben. Er st{\"u}tzt sich auf schon vorhandene Arbeitshilfen, Handlungsempfehlungen, Leitf{\"a}den und weitere Hinweise und verweist an vielen Stellen auch darauf. So soll ein praxistauglicher Leitfaden entstehen, der flexibel anwendbar ist. Mit Hilfe des vorliegenden Leitfadens k{\"o}nnen Kommunen ihre Aktivit{\"a}ten auf Hitze oder Starkregen fokussieren oder einen umfassenden Aktionsplan f{\"u}r beide Themenbereiche erstellen.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Li2024, author = {Li, Yunfei}, title = {On the influence of density and morphology on the Urban Heat Island intensity}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-62150}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-621504}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xviii, 119}, year = {2024}, abstract = {The urban heat island (UHI) effect, describing an elevated temperature of urban areas compared with their natural surroundings, can expose urban dwellers to additional heat stress, especially during hot summer days. A comprehensive understanding of the UHI dynamics along with urbanization is of great importance to efficient heat stress mitigation strategies towards sustainable urban development. This is, however, still challenging due to the difficulties of isolating the influences of various contributing factors that interact with each other. In this work, I present a systematical and quantitative analysis of how urban intrinsic properties (e.g., urban size, density, and morphology) influence UHI intensity. To this end, we innovatively combine urban growth modelling and urban climate simulation to separate the influence of urban intrinsic factors from that of background climate, so as to focus on the impact of urbanization on the UHI effect. The urban climate model can create a laboratory environment which makes it possible to conduct controlled experiments to separate the influences from different driving factors, while the urban growth model provides detailed 3D structures that can be then parameterized into different urban development scenarios tailored for these experiments. The novelty in the methodology and experiment design leads to the following achievements of our work. First, we develop a stochastic gravitational urban growth model that can generate 3D structures varying in size, morphology, compactness, and density gradient. We compare various characteristics, like fractal dimensions (box-counting, area-perimeter scaling, area-population scaling, etc.), and radial gradient profiles of land use share and population density, against those of real-world cities from empirical studies. The model shows the capability of creating 3D structures resembling real-world cities. This model can generate 3D structure samples for controlled experiments to assess the influence of some urban intrinsic properties in question. [Chapter 2] With the generated 3D structures, we run several series of simulations with urban structures varying in properties like size, density and morphology, under the same weather conditions. Analyzing how the 2m air temperature based canopy layer urban heat island (CUHI) intensity varies in response to the changes of the considered urban factors, we find the CUHI intensity of a city is directly related to the built-up density and an amplifying effect that urban sites have on each other. We propose a Gravitational Urban Morphology (GUM) indicator to capture the neighbourhood warming effect. We build a regression model to estimate the CUHI intensity based on urban size, urban gross building volume, and the GUM indicator. Taking the Berlin area as an example, we show the regression model capable of predicting the CUHI intensity under various urban development scenarios. [Chapter 3] Based on the multi-annual average summer surface urban heat island (SUHI) intensity derived from Land surface temperature, we further study how urban intrinsic factors influence the SUHI effect of the 5,000 largest urban clusters in Europe. We find a similar 3D GUM indicator to be an effective predictor of the SUHI intensity of these European cities. Together with other urban factors (vegetation condition, elevation, water coverage), we build different multivariate linear regression models and a climate space based Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) model that can better predict SUHI intensity. By investigating the roles background climate factors play in modulating the coefficients of the GWR model, we extend the multivariate linear model to a nonlinear one by integrating some climate parameters, such as the average of daily maximal temperature and latitude. This makes it applicable across a range of background climates. The nonlinear model outperforms linear models in SUHI assessment as it captures the interaction of urban factors and the background climate. [Chapter 4] Our work reiterates the essential roles of urban density and morphology in shaping the urban thermal environment. In contrast to many previous studies that link bigger cities with higher UHI intensity, we show that cities larger in the area do not necessarily experience a stronger UHI effect. In addition, the results extend our knowledge by demonstrating the influence of urban 3D morphology on the UHI effect. This underlines the importance of inspecting cities as a whole from the 3D perspective. While urban 3D morphology is an aggregated feature of small-scale urban elements, the influence it has on the city-scale UHI intensity cannot simply be scaled up from that of its neighbourhood-scale components. The spatial composition and configuration of urban elements both need to be captured when quantifying urban 3D morphology as nearby neighbourhoods also cast influences on each other. Our model serves as a useful UHI assessment tool for the quantitative comparison of urban intervention/development scenarios. It can support harnessing the capacity of UHI mitigation through optimizing urban morphology, with the potential of integrating climate change into heat mitigation strategies.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Nomosatryo2023, author = {Nomosatryo, Sulung}, title = {Biogeochemical characteristics of a tropical lake}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-59400}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-594006}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xix, 175}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Biogeochemical analyses of lacustrine environments are well-established methods that allow exploring and understanding complex systems in the lake ecosystem. However, most were conducted in temperate lakes controlled by entirely different physical conditions than in tropical climates. The most important difference between the temperate and tropical lakes is lacking seasonal temperature fluctuations in the latter, which leads to a stable temperature gradient in the water column. Thus, the water column in tropical latitudes generally is void of perturbations that can be seen in their temperate counterparts. Permanent stratification in the water column provides optimal conditions for intact sedimentation. The geochemical processes in the water column and the weathering process in the distinct lithology in the catchment leads to the different biogeochemical characteristic in the sediment. Conducting a biogeochemical study in this lake sediment, especially in the Sediment Water Interface (SWI) helps reveal the sedimentation and diagenetic process records influenced by the internal or external loading. Lake Sentani, the study area, is one of the thousands of lakes in Indonesia and located in the Papua province. This tropical lake has a unique feature, as it consists of four interconnected sub-basins with different water depths. More importantly, its catchment is comprised of various different lithologies. Hence, its lithological characteristics are highly diverse, and range from mafic and ultramafic rocks to clastic sediment and carbonates. Each sub-basin receives a distinct sediment input. Equally important, besides the natural loading, Lake Sentani is also influenced by anthropogenic input. Previous studies have elaborated that there is an increase in population growth rate around the lake which has direct consequences on eutrophication. Considering these factors, the government of The Republic of Indonesia put Lake Sentani on the list of national priority lakes for restoration. This thesis aims to develop a fundamental understanding of Lake Sentani's sedimentary geochemistry and geomicrobiology with a special focus on the effects of different lithologies and anthropogenic pressures in the catchment area. We conducted geochemical and geomicrobiology research on Lake Sentani to meet this objective. We investigated geochemical characteristics in the water column, porewater, and sediment core of the four sub-basins. Additional to direct investigations of the lake itself, we also studied the sediments in the tributary rivers, of which some are ephemeral, as well as the river mouths, as connections between riverine and the lacustrine habitat. The thesis is composed of three main publications about Lake Sentani and supported by several publications that focus on other tropical lakes in Indonesia. The first main publication investigates the geochemical characterization of the water column, porewater, and surface sediment (upper 40-50 cm) from the center of the four sub-basins. It reveals that besides catchment lithology, the water column heavily influences the geochemical characteristics in the lake sediments and their porewater. The findings indicate that water column stratification has a strong influence on overall chemistry. The four sub-basins are very different with regard to their water column chemistry. Based on the physicochemical profiles, especially dissolved oxygen, one sub-basin is oxygenated, one intermediate i.e. just reaches oxygen depletion at the sediment-water interface, and two sub-basins are fully meromictic. However, all four sub-basins share the same surface water chemistry. The structure of the water column creates differences on the patterns of anions and cations in the porewater. Likewise, the distinct differences in geochemical composition between the sub-basins show that the lithology in the catchment affects the geochemical characteristic in the sediment. Overall, water column stratification and particularly bottom water oxygenation strongly influence the overall elemental composition of the sediment and porewater composition. The second publication reveals differences in surface sediment composition between habitats, influenced by lithological variations in the catchment area. The macro-element distribution shows that the geochemical characteristics between habitats are different. Furthermore, the geochemical composition also indicates a distinct distribution between the sub-basins. The geochemical composition of the eastern sub-basin suggests that lithogenic elements are more dominant than authigenic elements. This is also supported by sulfide speciation, particle distribution, and smear slide data. The third publication is a geomicrobiological study of the surface sediment. We compare the geochemical composition of the surface sediment and its microbiological composition and compare the different signals. Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) of the 16S rRNA gene was applied to determine the microbial community composition of the surface sediment from a great number of locations. We use a large number of sampling sites in all four sub-basins as well as in the rivers and river mouths to illustrate the links between the river, the river mouth, and the lake. Rigorous assessment of microbial communities across the diverse Lake Sentani habitats allowed us to study some of these links and report novel findings on microbial patterns in such ecosystems. The main result of the Principal Coordinates Analysis (PCoA) based on microbial community composition highlighted some commonalities but also differences between the microbial community analysis and the geochemical data. The microbial community in rivers, river mouths and sub-basins is strongly influenced by anthropogenic input from the catchment area. Generally, Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes could be an indicator for river sediments. The microbial community in the river is directly influenced by anthropogenic pressure and is markedly different from the lake sediment. Meanwhile, the microbial community in the lake sediment reflects the anoxic environment, which is prevalent across the lake in all sediments below a few mm burial depth. The lake sediments harbour abundant sulfate reducers and methanogens. The microbial communities in sediments from river mouths are influenced by both rivers and lake ecosystems. This study provides valuable information to understand the basic processes that control biogeochemical cycling in Lake Sentani. Our findings are critical for lake managers to accurately assess the uncertainties of the changing environmental conditions related to the anthropogenic pressure in the catchment area. Lake Sentani is a unique study site directly influenced by the different geology across the watershed and morphometry of the four studied basins. As a result of these factors, there are distinct geochemical differences between the habitats (river, river mouth, lake) and the four sub-basins. In addition to geochemistry, microbial community composition also shows differences between habitats, although there are no obvious differences between the four sub-basins. However, unlike sediment geochemistry, microbial community composition is impacted by human activities. Therefore, this thesis will provide crucial baseline data for future lake management.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Kemper2023, author = {Kemper, Tarek}, title = {KLIMAGRAR - Neue Methoden der Begleitforschung am Beispiel des klimagerechten Handelns in der Landwirtschaft}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-60192}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-601924}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {109}, year = {2023}, abstract = {In Forschungsprogrammen werden zahlreiche Akteure mit unterschiedlichen Hintergr{\"u}nden und fachlichen Expertisen in Einzel- oder Verbundvorhaben vereint, die jedoch weitestgehend unabh{\"a}ngig voneinander durchgef{\"u}hrt werden. Vor dem Hintergrund, dass gesamtgesellschaftliche Herausforderungen wie die globale Erw{\"a}rmung zunehmend disziplin{\"u}bergreifende L{\"o}sungsans{\"a}tze erfordern, sollten Vernetzungs- und Transferprozesse in Forschungsprogrammen st{\"a}rker in den Fokus r{\"u}cken. Mit der Implementierung einer Begleitforschung kann dieser Forderung Rechnung getragen werden. Begleitforschung unterscheidet sich in ihrer Herangehensweise und ihrer Zielvorstellung von den „{\"u}blichen" Projekten und kann in unterschiedlichen theoretischen Reinformen auftreten. Verk{\"u}rzt dargestellt agiert sie entweder (1) inhaltlich komplement{\"a}r zu den jeweiligen Forschungsprojekten, (2) auf einer Metaebene mit Fokus auf die Prozesse im Forschungsprogramm oder (3) als integrierende, synthetisierende Instanz, f{\"u}r die die Vernetzung der Projekte im Forschungsprogramm sowie der Wissenstransfer von Bedeutung sind. Zwar sind diese Formen analytisch in theoretische Reinformen trennbar, in der Praxis ergibt sich in der Regel jedoch ein Mix aus allen dreien. In diesem Zusammenhang schließt die vorliegende Dissertation als erg{\"a}nzende Studie an bisherige Ans{\"a}tze zum methodischen Handwerkszeug der Begleitforschung an und fokussiert auf folgende Fragestellungen: Auf welcher Basis kann die Vernetzung der Akteure in einem Forschungsprogramm durchgef{\"u}hrt werden, um diese effektiv zusammenzubringen? Welche weiteren methodischen Elemente sollten daran ansetzen, um einen Mehrwert zu generieren, der die Summe der Einzelergebnisse des Forschungsprogrammes {\"u}bersteigt? Von welcher Art kann dann ein solcher Mehrwert sein und welche Rolle spielt dabei die Begleitforschung? Das erste methodische Element bildet die Erhebung und Aufbereitung einer Ausgangsdatenbasis. Durch eine auf semantischer Analyse basierenden Verschlagwortung projektbezogener Texte l{\"a}sst sich eine umfassende Datenbasis aus den Inhalten der Forschungsprojekte generieren. Die Schlagw{\"o}rter werden dabei anhand eines kontrollierten Vokabulars in einem Schlagwortkatalog strukturiert. Parallel dazu werden sie wiederum den jeweiligen Projekten zugeordnet, wodurch diese thematische Merkmale erhalten. Um thematische {\"U}berschneidungen zwischen Forschungsprojekten sichtbar und interpretierbar zu machen, beinhaltet das zweite Element Ans{\"a}tze zur Visualisierung. Dazu werden die Informationen in einen Netzwerkgraphen transferiert, der sowohl alle im Forschungsprogramm involvierten Projekte als auch die identifizierten Schlagw{\"o}rter in Relation zueinander abbilden kann. So kann zum Beispiel sichtbar gemacht werden, welche Forschungsprojekte sich auf Basis ihrer Inhalte „n{\"a}her" sind als andere. Genau diese Information wird im dritten methodischen Element als Planungsgrundlage f{\"u}r unterschiedliche Veranstaltungsformate wie Arbeitstagungen oder Transferwerkst{\"a}tten genutzt. Das vierte methodische Element umfasst die Synthesebildung. Diese gestaltet sich als Prozess {\"u}ber den gesamten Zeitraum der Zusammenarbeit zwischen Begleitforschung und den weiteren Forschungsprojekten hinweg, da in die Synthese unter anderem Zwischen-, Teil- und Endergebnisse der Projekte einfließen, genauso wie Inhalte aus den unterschiedlichen Veranstaltungen. Letztendlich ist dieses vierte Element auch das Mittel, um aus den integrierten und synthetisierten Informationen Handlungsempfehlungen f{\"u}r zuk{\"u}nftige Vorhaben abzuleiten. Die Erarbeitung der methodischen Elemente erfolgte im laufenden Prozess des Begleitforschungsprojektes KlimAgrar, welches der vorliegenden Dissertation als Fallbeispiel dient und dessen Hintergr{\"u}nde in der Thematik Klimaschutz und Klimaanpassung in der Landwirtschaft im Text ausf{\"u}hrlich erl{\"a}utert werden.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Schmitz2023, author = {Schmitz, Se{\´a}n}, title = {Using low-cost sensors to gather high resolution measurements of air quality in urban environments and inform mobility policy}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-60105}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-601053}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {180}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Air pollution has been a persistent global problem in the past several hundred years. While some industrialized nations have shown improvements in their air quality through stricter regulation, others have experienced declines as they rapidly industrialize. The WHO's 2021 update of their recommended air pollution limit values reflects the substantial impacts on human health of pollutants such as NO2 and O3, as recent epidemiological evidence suggests substantial long-term health impacts of air pollution even at low concentrations. Alongside developments in our understanding of air pollution's health impacts, the new technology of low-cost sensors (LCS) has been taken up by both academia and industry as a new method for measuring air pollution. Due primarily to their lower cost and smaller size, they can be used in a variety of different applications, including in the development of higher resolution measurement networks, in source identification, and in measurements of air pollution exposure. While significant efforts have been made to accurately calibrate LCS with reference instrumentation and various statistical models, accuracy and precision remain limited by variable sensor sensitivity. Furthermore, standard procedures for calibration still do not exist and most proprietary calibration algorithms are black-box, inaccessible to the public. This work seeks to expand the knowledge base on LCS in several different ways: 1) by developing an open-source calibration methodology; 2) by deploying LCS at high spatial resolution in urban environments to test their capability in measuring microscale changes in urban air pollution; 3) by connecting LCS deployments with the implementation of local mobility policies to provide policy advice on resultant changes in air quality. In a first step, it was found that LCS can be consistently calibrated with good performance against reference instrumentation using seven general steps: 1) assessing raw data distribution, 2) cleaning data, 3) flagging data, 4) model selection and tuning, 5) model validation, 6) exporting final predictions, and 7) calculating associated uncertainty. By emphasizing the need for consistent reporting of details at each step, most crucially on model selection, validation, and performance, this work pushed forward with the effort towards standardization of calibration methodologies. In addition, with the open-source publication of code and data for the seven-step methodology, advances were made towards reforming the largely black-box nature of LCS calibrations. With a transparent and reliable calibration methodology established, LCS were then deployed in various street canyons between 2017 and 2020. Using two types of LCS, metal oxide (MOS) and electrochemical (EC), their performance in capturing expected patterns of urban NO2 and O3 pollution was evaluated. Results showed that calibrated concentrations from MOS and EC sensors matched general diurnal patterns in NO2 and O3 pollution measured using reference instruments. While MOS proved to be unreliable for discerning differences among measured locations within the urban environment, the concentrations measured with calibrated EC sensors matched expectations from modelling studies on NO2 and O3 pollution distribution in street canyons. As such, it was concluded that LCS are appropriate for measuring urban air quality, including for assisting urban-scale air pollution model development, and can reveal new insights into air pollution in urban environments. To achieve the last goal of this work, two measurement campaigns were conducted in connection with the implementation of three mobility policies in Berlin. The first involved the construction of a pop-up bike lane on Kottbusser Damm in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the second surrounded the temporary implementation of a community space on B{\"o}ckhstrasse, and the last was focused on the closure of a portion of Friedrichstrasse to all motorized traffic. In all cases, measurements of NO2 were collected before and after the measure was implemented to assess changes in air quality resultant from these policies. Results from the Kottbusser Damm experiment showed that the bike-lane reduced NO2 concentrations that cyclists were exposed to by 22 ± 19\%. On Friedrichstrasse, the street closure reduced NO2 concentrations to the level of the urban background without worsening the air quality on side streets. These valuable results were communicated swiftly to partners in the city administration responsible for evaluating the policies' success and future, highlighting the ability of LCS to provide policy-relevant results. As a new technology, much is still to be learned about LCS and their value to academic research in the atmospheric sciences. Nevertheless, this work has advanced the state of the art in several ways. First, it contributed a novel open-source calibration methodology that can be used by a LCS end-users for various air pollutants. Second, it strengthened the evidence base on the reliability of LCS for measuring urban air quality, finding through novel deployments in street canyons that LCS can be used at high spatial resolution to understand microscale air pollution dynamics. Last, it is the first of its kind to connect LCS measurements directly with mobility policies to understand their influences on local air quality, resulting in policy-relevant findings valuable for decisionmakers. It serves as an example of the potential for LCS to expand our understanding of air pollution at various scales, as well as their ability to serve as valuable tools in transdisciplinary research.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Calitri2023, author = {Calitri, Francesca}, title = {Co-evolution of erosion rates, weathering and profile development in soil landscapes of hummocky ground moraines}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-60138}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-601387}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {XXVII, 163, V}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Soil is today considered a non-renewable resource on societal time scale, as the rate of soil loss is higher than the one of soil formation. Soil formation is complex, can take several thousands of years and is influenced by a variety of factors, one of them is time. Oftentimes, there is the assumption of constant and progressive conditions for soil and/or profile development (i.e., steady-state). In reality, for most of the soils, their (co-)evolution leads to a complex and irregular soil development in time and space characterised by "progressive" and "regressive" phases. Lateral transport of soil material (i.e., soil erosion) is one of the principal processes shaping the land surface and soil profile during "regressive" phases and one of the major environmental problems the world faces. Anthropogenic activities like agriculture can exacerbate soil erosion. Thus, it is of vital importance to distinguish short-term soil redistribution rates (i.e., within decades) influenced by human activities differ from long-term natural rates. To do so, soil erosion (and denudation) rates can be determined by using a set of isotope methods that cover different time scales at landscape level. With the aim to unravel the co-evolution of weathering, soil profile development and lateral redistribution on a landscape level, we used Pluthonium-239+240 (239+240Pu), Beryllium-10 (10Be, in situ and meteoric) and Radiocarbon (14C) to calculate short- and long-term erosion rates in two settings, i.e., a natural and an anthropogenic environment in the hummocky ground moraine landscape of the Uckermark, North-eastern Germany. The main research questions were: 1. How do long-term and short-term rates of soil redistributing processes differ? 2. Are rates calculated from in situ 10Be comparable to those of using meteoric 10Be? 3. How do soil redistribution rates (short- and long-term) in an agricultural and in a natural landscape compare to each other? 4. Are the soil patterns observed in northern Germany purely a result of past events (natural and/or anthropogenic) or are they imbedded in ongoing processes? Erosion and deposition are reflected in a catena of soil profiles with no or almost no erosion on flat positions (hilltop), strong erosion on the mid-slope and accumulation of soil material at the toeslope position. These three characteristic process domains were chosen within the CarboZALF-D experimental site, characterised by intense anthropogenic activities. Likewise, a hydrosequence in an ancient forest was chosen for this study and being regarded as a catena strongly influenced by natural soil transport. The following main results were obtained using the above-mentioned range of isotope methods available to measure soil redistribution rates depending on the time scale needed (e.g., 239+240Pu, 10Be, 14C): 1. Short-term erosion rates are one order of magnitude higher than long-term rates in agricultural settings. 2. Both meteoric and in situ 10Be are suitable soil tracers to measure the long-term soil redistribution rates giving similar results in an anthropogenic environment for different landscape positions (e.g., hilltop, mid-slope, toeslope) 3. Short-term rates were extremely low/negligible in a natural landscape and very high in an agricultural landscape - -0.01 t ha-1 yr-1 (average value) and -25 t ha-1 yr-1 respectively. On the contrary, long-term rates in the forested landscape are comparable to those calculated in the agricultural area investigated with average values of -1.00 t ha-1 yr-1 and -0.79 t ha-1 yr-1. 4. Soil patterns observed in the forest might be due to human impact and activities started after the first settlements in the region, earlier than previously postulated, between 4.5 and 6.8 kyr BP, and not a result of recent soil erosion. 5. Furthermore, long-term soil redistribution rates are similar independently from the settings, meaning past natural soil mass redistribution processes still overshadow the present anthropogenic erosion processes. Overall, this study could make important contributions to the deciphering of the co-evolution of weathering, soil profile development and lateral redistribution in North-eastern Germany. The multi-methodological approach used can be challenged by the application in a wider range of landscapes and geographic regions.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Zhang2023, author = {Zhang, Xiaolin}, title = {Evaluation of nitrogen dynamics in high-order streams and rivers based on high-frequency monitoring}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-60764}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-607642}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {X, 113}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Nutrient storage, transform and transport are important processes for achieving environmental and ecological health, as well as conducting water management plans. Nitrogen is one of the most noticeable elements due to its impacts on tremendous consequences of eutrophication in aquatic systems. Among all nitrogen components, researches on nitrate are blooming because of widespread deployments of in-situ high-frequency sensors. Monitoring and studying nitrate can become a paradigm for any other reactive substances that may damage environmental conditions and cause economic losses. Identifying nitrate storage and its transport within a catchment are inspiring to the management of agricultural activities and municipal planning. Storm events are periods when hydrological dynamics activate the exchange between nitrate storage and flow pathways. In this dissertation, long-term high-frequency monitoring data at three gauging stations in the Selke river were used to quantify event-scale nitrate concentration-discharge (C-Q) hysteretic relationships. The Selke catchment is characterized into three nested subcatchments by heterogeneous physiographic conditions and land use. With quantified hysteresis indices, impacts of seasonality and landscape gradients on C-Q relationships are explored. For example, arable area has deep nitrate legacy and can be activated with high intensity precipitation during wetting/wet periods (i.e., the strong hydrological connectivity). Hence, specific shapes of C-Q relationships in river networks can identify targeted locations and periods for agricultural management actions within the catchment to decrease nitrate output into downstream aquatic systems like the ocean. The capacity of streams for removing nitrate is of both scientific and social interest, which makes the quantification motivated. Although measurements of nitrate dynamics are advanced compared to other substances, the methodology to directly quantify nitrate uptake pathways is still limited spatiotemporally. The major problem is the complex convolution of hydrological and biogeochemical processes, which limits in-situ measurements (e.g., isotope addition) usually to small streams with steady flow conditions. This makes the extrapolation of nitrate dynamics to large streams highly uncertain. Hence, understanding of in-stream nitrate dynamic in large rivers is still necessary. High-frequency monitoring of nitrate mass balance between upstream and downstream measurement sites can quantitatively disentangle multi-path nitrate uptake dynamics at the reach scale (3-8 km). In this dissertation, we conducted this approach in large stream reaches with varying hydro-morphological and environmental conditions for several periods, confirming its success in disentangling nitrate uptake pathways and their temporal dynamics. Net nitrate uptake, autotrophic assimilation and heterotrophic uptake were disentangled, as well as their various diel and seasonal patterns. Natural streams generally can remove more nitrate under similar environmental conditions and heterotrophic uptake becomes dominant during post-wet seasons. Such two-station monitoring provided novel insights into reach-scale nitrate uptake processes in large streams. Long-term in-stream nitrate dynamics can also be evaluated with the application of water quality model. This is among the first time to use a data-model fusion approach to upscale the two-station methodology in large-streams with complex flow dynamics under long-term high-frequency monitoring, assessing the in-stream nitrate retention and its responses to drought disturbances from seasonal to sub-daily scale. Nitrate retention (both net uptake and net release) exhibited substantial seasonality, which also differed in the investigated normal and drought years. In the normal years, winter and early spring seasons exhibited extensive net releases, then general net uptake occurred after the annual high-flow season at later spring and early summer with autotrophic processes dominating and during later summer-autumn low-flow periods with heterotrophy-characteristics predominating. Net nitrate release occurred since late autumn until the next early spring. In the drought years, the late-autumn net releases were not so consistently persisted as in the normal years and the predominance of autotrophic processes occurred across seasons. Aforementioned comprehensive results of nitrate dynamics on stream scale facilitate the understanding of instream processes, as well as raise the importance of scientific monitoring schemes for hydrology and water quality parameters.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Riebold2023, author = {Riebold, Johannes}, title = {On the linkage between future Arctic sea ice retreat, the large-scale atmospheric circulation and temperature extremes over Europe}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-60488}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-604883}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xi, 126}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Extreme weather and climate events are one of the greatest dangers for present-day society. Therefore, it is important to provide reliable statements on what changes in extreme events can be expected along with future global climate change. However, the projected overall response to future climate change is generally a result of a complex interplay between individual physical mechanisms originated within the different climate subsystems. Hence, a profound understanding of these individual contributions is required in order to provide meaningful assessments of future changes in extreme events. One aspect of climate change is the recently observed phenomenon of Arctic Amplification and the related dramatic Arctic sea ice decline, which is expected to continue over the next decades. The question to what extent Arctic sea ice loss is able to affect atmospheric dynamics and extreme events over mid-latitudes has received a lot of attention over recent years and still remains a highly debated topic. In this respect, the objective of this thesis is to contribute to a better understanding on the impact of future Arctic sea ice retreat on European temperature extremes and large-scale atmospheric dynamics. The outcomes are based on model data from the atmospheric general circulation model ECHAM6. Two different sea ice sensitivity simulations from the Polar Amplification Intercomparison Project are employed and contrasted to a present day reference experiment: one experiment with prescribed future sea ice loss over the entire Arctic, as well as another one with sea ice reductions only locally prescribed over the Barents-Kara Sea.\% prescribed over the entire Arctic, as well as only locally over the Barent/Karasea with a present day reference experiment. The first part of the thesis focuses on how future Arctic sea ice reductions affect large-scale atmospheric dynamics over the Northern Hemisphere in terms of occurrence frequency changes of five preferred Euro-Atlantic circulation regimes. When compared to circulation regimes computed from ERA5 it shows that ECHAM6 is able to realistically simulate the regime structures. Both ECHAM6 sea ice sensitivity experiments exhibit similar regime frequency changes. Consistent with tendencies found in ERA5, a more frequent occurrence of a Scandinavian blocking pattern in midwinter is for instance detected under future sea ice conditions in the sensitivity experiments. Changes in occurrence frequencies of circulation regimes in summer season are however barely detected. After identifying suitable regime storylines for the occurrence of European temperature extremes in winter, the previously detected regime frequency changes are used to quantify dynamically and thermodynamically driven contributions to sea ice-induced changes in European winter temperature extremes. It is for instance shown how the preferred occurrence of a Scandinavian blocking regime under low sea ice conditions dynamically contributes to more frequent midwinter cold extreme occurrences over Central Europe. In addition, a reduced occurrence frequency of a Atlantic trough regime is linked to reduced winter warm extremes over Mid-Europe. Furthermore, it is demonstrated how the overall thermodynamical warming effect due to sea ice loss can result in less (more) frequent winter cold (warm) extremes, and consequently counteracts the dynamically induced changes. Compared to winter season, circulation regimes in summer are less suitable as storylines for the occurrence of summer heat extremes. Therefore, an approach based on circulation analogues is employed in order to quantify thermodyamically and dynamically driven contributions to sea ice-induced changes of summer heat extremes over three different European sectors. Reduced occurrences of blockings over Western Russia are detected in the ECHAM6 sea ice sensitivity experiments; however, arguing for dynamically and thermodynamically induced contributions to changes in summer heat extremes remains rather challenging.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Seleem2023, author = {Seleem, Omar}, title = {Towards urban pluvial flood mapping using data-driven models}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-59813}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-598137}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xv, 95}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Casualties and damages from urban pluvial flooding are increasing. Triggered by short, localized, and intensive rainfall events, urban pluvial floods can occur anywhere, even in areas without a history of flooding. Urban pluvial floods have relatively small temporal and spatial scales. Although cumulative losses from urban pluvial floods are comparable, most flood risk management and mitigation strategies focus on fluvial and coastal flooding. Numerical-physical-hydrodynamic models are considered the best tool to represent the complex nature of urban pluvial floods; however, they are computationally expensive and time-consuming. These sophisticated models make large-scale analysis and operational forecasting prohibitive. Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate and benchmark the performance of other alternative methods. The findings of this cumulative thesis are represented in three research articles. The first study evaluates two topographic-based methods to map urban pluvial flooding, fill-spill-merge (FSM) and topographic wetness index (TWI), by comparing them against a sophisticated hydrodynamic model. The FSM method identifies flood-prone areas within topographic depressions while the TWI method employs maximum likelihood estimation to calibrate a TWI threshold (τ) based on inundation maps from the 2D hydrodynamic model. The results point out that the FSM method outperforms the TWI method. The study highlights then the advantage and limitations of both methods. Data-driven models provide a promising alternative to computationally expensive hydrodynamic models. However, the literature lacks benchmarking studies to evaluate the different models' performance, advantages and limitations. Model transferability in space is a crucial problem. Most studies focus on river flooding, likely due to the relative availability of flow and rain gauge records for training and validation. Furthermore, they consider these models as black boxes. The second study uses a flood inventory for the city of Berlin and 11 predictive features which potentially indicate an increased pluvial flooding hazard to map urban pluvial flood susceptibility using a convolutional neural network (CNN), an artificial neural network (ANN) and the benchmarking machine learning models random forest (RF) and support vector machine (SVM). I investigate the influence of spatial resolution on the implemented models, the models' transferability in space and the importance of the predictive features. The results show that all models perform well and the RF models are superior to the other models within and outside the training domain. The models developed using fine spatial resolution (2 and 5 m) could better identify flood-prone areas. Finally, the results point out that aspect is the most important predictive feature for the CNN models, and altitude is for the other models. While flood susceptibility maps identify flood-prone areas, they do not represent flood variables such as velocity and depth which are necessary for effective flood risk management. To address this, the third study investigates data-driven models' transferability to predict urban pluvial floodwater depth and the models' ability to enhance their predictions using transfer learning techniques. It compares the performance of RF (the best-performing model in the previous study) and CNN models using 12 predictive features and output from a hydrodynamic model. The findings in the third study suggest that while CNN models tend to generalise and smooth the target function on the training dataset, RF models suffer from overfitting. Hence, RF models are superior for predictions inside the training domains but fail outside them while CNN models could control the relative loss in performance outside the training domains. Finally, the CNN models benefit more from transfer learning techniques than RF models, boosting their performance outside training domains. In conclusion, this thesis has evaluated both topographic-based methods and data-driven models to map urban pluvial flooding. However, further studies are crucial to have methods that completely overcome the limitation of 2D hydrodynamic models.}, language = {en} } @misc{SeleemAyzelBronstertetal.2023, author = {Seleem, Omar and Ayzel, Georgy and Bronstert, Axel and Heistermann, Maik}, title = {Transferability of data-driven models to predict urban pluvial flood water depth in Berlin, Germany}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {1323}, issn = {1866-8372}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-58916}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-589168}, pages = {809 -- 822}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Data-driven models have been recently suggested to surrogate computationally expensive hydrodynamic models to map flood hazards. However, most studies focused on developing models for the same area or the same precipitation event. It is thus not obvious how transferable the models are in space. This study evaluates the performance of a convolutional neural network (CNN) based on the U-Net architecture and the random forest (RF) algorithm to predict flood water depth, the models' transferability in space and performance improvement using transfer learning techniques. We used three study areas in Berlin to train, validate and test the models. The results showed that (1) the RF models outperformed the CNN models for predictions within the training domain, presumable at the cost of overfitting; (2) the CNN models had significantly higher potential than the RF models to generalize beyond the training domain; and (3) the CNN models could better benefit from transfer learning technique to boost their performance outside training domains than RF models.}, language = {en} } @article{SeleemAyzelBronstertetal.2023, author = {Seleem, Omar and Ayzel, Georgy and Bronstert, Axel and Heistermann, Maik}, title = {Transferability of data-driven models to predict urban pluvial flood water depth in Berlin, Germany}, series = {Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences}, volume = {23}, journal = {Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences}, number = {2}, publisher = {Copernicus}, address = {G{\"o}ttingen}, issn = {1684-9981}, doi = {10.5194/nhess-23-809-2023}, pages = {809 -- 822}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Data-driven models have been recently suggested to surrogate computationally expensive hydrodynamic models to map flood hazards. However, most studies focused on developing models for the same area or the same precipitation event. It is thus not obvious how transferable the models are in space. This study evaluates the performance of a convolutional neural network (CNN) based on the U-Net architecture and the random forest (RF) algorithm to predict flood water depth, the models' transferability in space and performance improvement using transfer learning techniques. We used three study areas in Berlin to train, validate and test the models. The results showed that (1) the RF models outperformed the CNN models for predictions within the training domain, presumable at the cost of overfitting; (2) the CNN models had significantly higher potential than the RF models to generalize beyond the training domain; and (3) the CNN models could better benefit from transfer learning technique to boost their performance outside training domains than RF models.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Luna2023, author = {Luna, Lisa Victoria}, title = {Rainfall-triggered landslides: conditions, prediction, and warning}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-60092}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-600927}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xix, 119}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Rainfall-triggered landslides are a globally occurring hazard that cause several thousand fatalities per year on average and lead to economic damages by destroying buildings and infrastructure and blocking transportation networks. For people living and governing in susceptible areas, knowing not only where, but also when landslides are most probable is key to inform strategies to reduce risk, requiring reliable assessments of weather-related landslide hazard and adequate warning. Taking proper action during high hazard periods, such as moving to higher levels of houses, closing roads and rail networks, and evacuating neighborhoods, can save lives. Nevertheless, many regions of the world with high landslide risk currently lack dedicated, operational landslide early warning systems. The mounting availability of temporal landslide inventory data in some regions has increasingly enabled data-driven approaches to estimate landslide hazard on the basis of rainfall conditions. In other areas, however, such data remains scarce, calling for appropriate statistical methods to estimate hazard with limited data. The overarching motivation for this dissertation is to further our ability to predict rainfall-triggered landslides in time in order to expand and improve warning. To this end, I applied Bayesian inference to probabilistically quantify and predict landslide activity as a function of rainfall conditions at spatial scales ranging from a small coastal town, to metropolitan areas worldwide, to a multi-state region, and temporal scales from hourly to seasonal. This thesis is composed of three studies. In the first study, I contributed to developing and validating statistical models for an online landslide warning dashboard for the small town of Sitka, Alaska, USA. We used logistic and Poisson regressions to estimate daily landslide probability and counts from an inventory of only five reported landslide events and 18 years of hourly precipitation measurements at the Sitka airport. Drawing on community input, we established two warning thresholds for implementation in the dashboard, which uses observed rainfall and US National Weather Service forecasts to provide real-time estimates of landslide hazard. In the second study, I estimated rainfall intensity-duration thresholds for shallow landsliding for 26 cities worldwide and a global threshold for urban landslides. I found that landslides in urban areas occurred at rainfall intensities that were lower than previously reported global thresholds, and that 31\% of urban landslides were triggered during moderate rainfall events. However, landslides in cities with widely varying climates and topographies were triggered above similar critical rainfall intensities: thresholds for 77\% of cities were indistinguishable from the global threshold, suggesting that urbanization may harmonize thresholds between cities, overprinting natural variability. I provide a baseline threshold that could be considered for warning in cities with limited landslide inventory data. In the third study, I investigated seasonal landslide response to annual precipitation patterns in the Pacific Northwest region, USA by using Bayesian multi-level models to combine data from five heterogeneous landslide inventories that cover different areas and time periods. I quantitatively confirmed a distinctly seasonal pattern of landsliding and found that peak landslide activity lags the annual precipitation peak. In February, at the height of the landslide season, landslide intensity for a given amount of monthly rainfall is up to ten times higher than at the season onset in November, underlining the importance of antecedent seasonal hillslope conditions. Together, these studies contributed actionable, objective information for landslide early warning and examples for the application of Bayesian methods to probabilistically quantify landslide hazard from inventory and rainfall data.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Schoppa2023, author = {Schoppa, Lukas}, title = {Dynamics in the flood vulnerability of companies}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-59242}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-592424}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {X, 165}, year = {2023}, abstract = {River flooding is a constant peril for societies, causing direct economic losses in the order of \$100 billion worldwide each year. Under global change, the prolonged concentration of people and assets in floodplains is accompanied by an emerging intensification of flood extremes due to anthropogenic global warming, ultimately exacerbating flood risk in many regions of the world. Flood adaptation plays a key role in the mitigation of impacts, but poor understanding of vulnerability and its dynamics limits the validity of predominant risk assessment methods and impedes effective adaptation strategies. Therefore, this thesis investigates new methods for flood risk assessment that embrace the complexity of flood vulnerability, using the understudied commercial sector as an application example. Despite its importance for accurate risk evaluation, flood loss modeling has been based on univariable and deterministic stage-damage functions for a long time. However, such simplistic methods only insufficiently describe the large variation in damage processes, which initiated the development of multivariable and probabilistic loss estimation techniques. The first study of this thesis developed flood loss models for companies that are based on emerging statistical and machine learning approaches (i.e., random forest, Bayesian network, Bayesian regression). In a benchmarking experiment on basis of object-level loss survey data, the study showed that all proposed models reproduced the heterogeneity in damage processes and outperformed conventional stage-damage functions with respect to predictive accuracy. Another advantage of the novel methods is that they convey probabilistic information in predictions, which communicates the large remaining uncertainties transparently and, hence, supports well-informed risk assessment. Flood risk assessment combines vulnerability assessment (e.g., loss estimation) with hazard and exposure analyses. Although all of the three risk drivers interact and change over time, such dependencies and dynamics are usually not explicitly included in flood risk models. Recently, systemic risk assessment that dissolves the isolated consideration of risk drivers has gained traction, but the move to holistic risk assessment comes with limited thoroughness in terms of loss estimation and data limitations. In the second study, I augmented a socio-hydrological system dynamics model for companies in Dresden, Germany, with the multivariable Bayesian regression loss model from the first study. The additional process-detail and calibration data improved the loss estimation in the systemic risk assessment framework and contributed to more accurate and reliable simulations. The model uses Bayesian inference to quantify uncertainty and learn the model parameters from a combination of prior knowledge and diverse data. The third study demonstrates the potential of the socio-hydrological flood risk model for continuous, long-term risk assessment and management. Using hydroclimatic ad socioeconomic forcing data, I projected a wide range of possible risk trajectories until the end of the century, taking into account the adaptive behavior of companies. The study results underline the necessity of increased adaptation efforts to counteract the expected intensification of flood risk due to climate change. A sensitivity analysis of the effectiveness of different adaptation measures and strategies revealed that optimized adaptation has the potential to mitigate flood risk by up to 60\%, particularly when combining structural and non-structural measures. Additionally, the application shows that systemic risk assessment is capable of capturing adverse long-term feedbacks in the human-flood system such as the levee effect. Overall, this thesis advances the representation of vulnerability in flood risk modeling by offering modeling solutions that embrace the complexity of human-flood interactions and quantify uncertainties consistently using probabilistic modeling. The studies show how scarce information in data and previous experiments can be integrated in the inference process to provide model predictions and simulations that are reliable and rich in information. Finally, the focus on the flood vulnerability of companies provides new insights into the heterogeneous damage processes and distinct flood coping of this sector.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Duy2023, author = {Duy, Nguyen Le}, title = {Hydrological processes in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-60260}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-602607}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xxi, 153}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Understanding hydrological processes is of fundamental importance for the Vietnamese national food security and the livelihood of the population in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD). As a consequence of sparse data in this region, however, hydrologic processes, such as the controlling processes of precipitation, the interaction between surface and groundwater, and groundwater dynamics, have not been thoroughly studied. The lack of this knowledge may negatively impact the long-term strategic planning for sustainable groundwater resources management and may result in insufficient groundwater recharge and freshwater scarcity. It is essential to develop useful methods for a better understanding of hydrological processes in such data-sparse regions. The goal of this dissertation is to advance methodologies that can improve the understanding of fundamental hydrological processes in the VMD, based on the analyses of stable water isotopes and monitoring data. The thesis mainly focuses on the controlling processes of precipitation, the mechanism of surface-groundwater interaction, and the groundwater dynamics. These processes have not been fully addressed in the VMD so far. The thesis is based on statistical analyses of the isotopic data of Global Network of Isotopes in Precipitation (GNIP), of meteorological and hydrological data from Vietnamese agencies, and of the stable water isotopes and monitoring data collected as part of this work. First, the controlling processes of precipitation were quantified by the combination of trajectory analysis, multi-factor linear regression, and relative importance analysis (hereafter, a model-based statistical approach). The validity of this approach is confirmed by similar, but mainly qualitative results obtained in other studies. The total variation in precipitation isotopes (δ18O and δ2H) can be better explained by multiple linear regression (up to 80\%) than single-factor linear regression (30\%). The relative importance analysis indicates that atmospheric moisture regimes control precipitation isotopes rather than local climatic conditions. The most crucial factor is the upstream rainfall along the trajectories of air mass movement. However, the influences of regional and local climatic factors vary in importance over the seasons. The developed model-based statistical approach is a robust tool for the interpretation of precipitation isotopes and could also be applied to understand the controlling processes of precipitation in other regions. Second, the concept of the two-component lumped-parameter model (LPM) in conjunction with stable water isotopes was applied to examine the surface-groundwater interaction in the VMD. A calibration framework was also set up to evaluate the behaviour, parameter identifiability, and uncertainties of two-component LPMs. The modelling results provided insights on the subsurface flow conditions, the recharge contributions, and the spatial variation of groundwater transit time. The subsurface flow conditions at the study site can be best represented by the linear-piston flow distribution. The contributions of the recharge sources change with distance to the river. The mean transit time (mTT) of riverbank infiltration increases with the length of the horizontal flow path and the decreasing gradient between river and groundwater. River water infiltrates horizontally mainly via the highly permeable aquifer, resulting in short mTTs (<40 weeks) for locations close to the river (<200 m). The vertical infiltration from precipitation takes place primarily via a low-permeable overlying aquitard, resulting in considerably longer mTTs (>80 weeks). Notably, the transit time of precipitation infiltration is independent of the distance to the river. All these results are hydrologically plausible and could be quantified by the presented method for the first time. This study indicates that the highly complex mechanism of surface-groundwater interaction at riverbank infiltration systems can be conceptualized by exploiting two-component LPMs. It is illustrated that the model concept can be used as a tool to investigate the hydrological functioning of mixing processes and the flow path of multiple water components in riverbank infiltration systems. Lastly, a suite of time series analysis approaches was applied to examine the groundwater dynamics in the VMD. The assessment was focused on the time-variant trends of groundwater levels (GWLs), the groundwater memory effect (representing the time that an aquifer holds water), and the hydraulic response between surface water and multi-layer alluvial aquifers. The analysis indicates that the aquifers act as low-pass filters to reduce the high-frequency signals in the GWL variations, and limit the recharge to the deep groundwater. The groundwater abstraction has exceeded groundwater recharge between 1997 and 2017, leading to the decline of groundwater levels (0.01-0.55 m/year) in all considered aquifers in the VMD. The memory effect varies according to the geographical location, being shorter in shallow aquifers and flood-prone areas and longer in deep aquifers and coastal regions. Groundwater depth, season, and location primarily control the variation of the response time between the river and alluvial aquifers. These findings are important contributions to the hydrogeological literature of a little-known groundwater system in an alluvial setting. It is suggested that time series analysis can be used as an efficient tool to understand groundwater systems where resources are insufficient to develop a physical-based groundwater model. This doctoral thesis demonstrates that important aspects of hydrological processes can be understood by statistical analysis of stable water isotope and monitoring data. The approaches developed in this thesis can be easily transferred to regions in similar tropical environments, particularly those in alluvial settings. The results of the thesis can be used as a baseline for future isotope-based studies and contribute to the hydrogeological literature of little-known groundwater systems in the VMD.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Mtilatila2023, author = {Mtilatila, Lucy Mphatso Ng'ombe}, title = {Climate change effects on drought, freshwater availability and hydro-power generation in an African environment}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-59929}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-599298}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xv, 167}, year = {2023}, abstract = {The work is designed to investigate the impacts and sensitivity of climate change on water resources, droughts and hydropower production in Malawi, the South-Eastern region which is highly vulnerable to climate change. It is observed that rainfall is decreasing and temperature is increasing which calls for the understanding of what these changes may impact the water resources, drought occurrences and hydropower generation in the region. The study is conducted in the Greater Lake Malawi Basin (Lake Malawi and Shire River Basins) and is divided into three projects. The first study is assessing the variability and trends of both meteorological and hydrological droughts from 1970-2013 in Lake Malawi and Shire River basins using the standardized precipitation index (SPI) and standardized precipitation and evaporation Index (SPEI) for meteorological droughts and the lake level change index (LLCI) for hydrological droughts. And later the relationship of the meteorological and hydrological droughts is established. While the second study extends the drought analysis into the future by examining the potential future meteorological water balance and associated drought characteristics such as the drought intensity (DI), drought months (DM), and drought events (DE) in the Greater Lake Malawi Basin. The sensitivity of drought to changes of rainfall and temperature is also assessed using the scenario-neutral approach. The climate change projections from 20 Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) models for Africa based on two scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) for the periods 2021-2050 and 2071-2100 are used. The study also investigates the effect of bias-correction (i.e., empirical quantile mapping) on the ability of the climate model ensemble in reproducing observed drought characteristics as compared to raw climate projections. The sensitivity of key hydrologic variables and hydropower generation to climate change in Lake Malawi and Shire River basins is assessed in third study. The study adapts the mesoscale Hydrological Model (mHM) which is applied separately in the Upper Lake Malawi and Shire River basins. A particular Lake Malawi model, which focuses on reservoir routing and lake water balance, has been developed and is interlinked between the two basins. Similar to second study, the scenario-neutral approach is also applied to determine the sensitivity of climate change on water resources more particularly Lake Malawi level and Shire River flow which later helps to estimate the hydropower production susceptibility. Results suggest that meteorological droughts are increasing due to a decrease in precipitation which is exacerbated by an increase in temperature (potential evapotranspiration). The hydrological system of Lake Malawi seems to have a >24-month memory towards meteorological conditions since the 36-months SPEI can predict hydrological droughts ten-months in advance. The study has found the critical lake level that would trigger hydrological drought to be 474.1 m.a.s.l. Despite the differences in the internal structures and uncertainties that exist among the climate models, they all agree on an increase of meteorological droughts in the future in terms of higher DI and longer events (DM). DI is projected to increase between +25\% and +50\% during 2021-2050 and between +131\% and +388\% during 2071-2100. This translates into +3 to +5, and +7 to +8 more drought months per year during both periods, respectively. With longer lasting drought events, DE is decreasing. Projected droughts based on RCP8.5 are 1.7 times more severe than droughts based on RCP4.5. It is also found that an annual temperature increase of 1°C decreases mean lake level and outflow by 0.3 m and 17\%, respectively, signifying the importance of intensified evaporation for Lake Malawi's water budget. Meanwhile, a +5\% (-5\%) deviation in annual rainfall changes mean lake level by +0.7 m (-0.6 m). The combined effects of temperature increase and rainfall decrease result in significantly lower flows on Shire River. The hydrological river regime may change from perennial to seasonal with the combination of annual temperature increase and precipitation decrease beyond 1.5°C (3.5°C) and -20\% (-15\%). The study further projects a reduction in annual hydropower production between 1\% (RCP8.5) and 2.5\% (RCP4.5) during 2021-2050 and between 5\% (RCP4.5) and 24\% (RCP8.5) during 2071-2100. The findings are later linked to global policies more particularly the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)'s Paris Agreement and the United Nations (UN)'s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and how the failure to adhere the restriction of temperature increase below the global limit of 1.5°C will affect drought and the water resources in Malawi consequently impact the hydropower production. As a result, the achievement of most of the SDGs will be compromised. The results show that it is of great importance that a further development of hydro energy on the Shire River should take into account the effects of climate change. The information generation is important for decision making more especially supporting the climate action required to fight against climate change. The frequency of extreme climate events due to climate change has reached the climate emergency as saving lives and livelihoods require urgent action.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Serwene2023, author = {Serwene, Pola}, title = {Geographie verstehen durch Zweisprachigkeit}, series = {Potsdamer Geographische Praxis}, journal = {Potsdamer Geographische Praxis}, number = {19}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, isbn = {978-3-86956-557-6}, issn = {2194-1599}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-57848}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-578486}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {360}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Bilingualer Unterricht gilt als das Erfolgsmodell f{\"u}r den schulischen Fremdsprachenerwerb in Deutschland und die Beherrschung einer Fremdsprache in Wort und Schrift ist eine entscheidende berufsqualifizierende Kompetenz in unserer globalisierten Welt. Insbesondere die Verzahnung fachlicher und sprachlicher Inhalte im Kontext Bilingualen Unterrichts scheint gewinnbringend f{\"u}r den Fremdspracherwerb zu sein. Dabei ist die Diskrepanz zwischen den zumeist noch geringen fremdsprachlichen F{\"a}higkeiten der Lernenden und den fachlichen Anspr{\"u}chen des Geographieunterrichts eine große Herausforderung f{\"u}r fachliches Lernen im bilingualen Sachfachunterricht. Es stellt sich die Frage, wie der Bilinguale Unterricht gestaltet sein muss, um einerseits geographische Themen fachlich komplex behandeln zu k{\"o}nnen und andererseits die Lernenden fremdsprachlich nicht zu {\"u}berfordern. Im Rahmen einer Design-Based-Research-Studie im bilingualen Geographieunterricht wurde untersucht, wie fachliches Lernen im bilingualen Geographieunterricht durch den Einsatz beider beteiligter Sprachen (Englisch/Deutsch) gef{\"o}rdert werden kann. Auf Grundlage eines theoretisch fundierten Kenntnisstands zum Bilingualen Unterricht und zum Lernen mit Fachkonzepten im Geographieunterricht wurde eine Lernumgebung konzipiert, im Unterricht erprobt und weiterentwickelt, in der Strategien des Sprachwechsels zum Einsatz kommen. Die Ergebnisse der Studie sind kontextbezogene Theorien einer zweisprachigen Didaktik f{\"u}r den bilingualen Geographieunterricht und Erkenntnisse zum Lernen mit Fachkonzepten im Geographieunterricht am Beispiel des geographischen Konzepts Wandel. Produkt der Studie ist eine unterrichtstaugliche Lernumgebung zum Thema Wandlungsprozesse an ausgew{\"a}hlten Orten f{\"u}r den bilingualen Geographieunterricht mit didaktischem Konzept, Unterrichtsmaterialien und -medien.}, language = {de} } @article{ArguellodeSouzaSamprognaMohorGuzmanAriasetal.2023, author = {Arguello de Souza, Felipe Augusto and Samprogna Mohor, Guilherme and Guzman Arias, Diego Alejandro and Sarmento Buarque, Ana Carolina and Taffarello, Denise and Mendiondo, Eduardo Mario}, title = {Droughts in S{\~a}o Paulo}, series = {Urban water journal}, volume = {20}, journal = {Urban water journal}, number = {10}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis}, address = {London [u.a.]}, issn = {1573-062X}, doi = {10.1080/1573062X.2022.2047735}, pages = {1682 -- 1694}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Literature has suggested that droughts and societies are mutually shaped and, therefore, both require a better understanding of their coevolution on risk reduction and water adaptation. Although the Sao Paulo Metropolitan Region drew attention because of the 2013-2015 drought, this was not the first event. This paper revisits this event and the 1985-1986 drought to compare the evolution of drought risk management aspects. Documents and hydrological records are analyzed to evaluate the hazard intensity, preparedness, exposure, vulnerability, responses, and mitigation aspects of both events. Although the hazard intensity and exposure of the latter event were larger than the former one, the policy implementation delay and the dependency of service areas in a single reservoir exposed the region to higher vulnerability. In addition to the structural and non-structural tools implemented just after the events, this work raises the possibility of rainwater reuse for reducing the stress in reservoirs.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Han2023, author = {Han, Sungju}, title = {Perceptions of nature-based solutions in the context of floods}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-57952}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-579524}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xiv, 150}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Traditional ways of reducing flood risk have encountered limitations in a climate-changing and rapidly urbanizing world. For instance, there has been a demanding requirement for massive investment in order to maintain a consistent level of security as well as increased flood exposure of people and property due to a false sense of security arising from the flood protection infrastructure. Against this background, nature-based solutions (NBS) have gained popularity as a sustainable and alternative way of dealing with diverse societal challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss. In particular, their ability to reduce flood risks while also offering ecological benefits has recently received global attention. Diverse co-benefits of NBS that favor both humans and nature are viewed as promising a wide endorsement of NBS. However, people's perceptions of NBS are not always positive. Local resistance to NBS projects as well as decision-makers' and practitioners' unwillingness to adopt NBS have been pointed out as a bottleneck to the successful realization and mainstreaming of NBS. In this regard, there has been a growing necessity to investigate people's perceptions of NBS. Current research has lacked an integrative perspective of both attitudinal and contextual factors that guide perceptions of NBS; it not only lacks empirical evidence, but a few existing ones are rather conflicting without having underlying theories. This has led to the overarching research question of this dissertation, "What shapes people's perceptions of NBS in the context of flooding?" The dissertation aims to answer the following sub-questions in the three papers that make up this dissertation: 1. What are the topics reflected in the previous literature influencing perceptions of NBS as a means to reduce hydro-meteorological risks? (Paper I) 2. What are the stimulating and hampering attitudinal and contextual factors for mainstreaming NBS for flood risk management? How are NBS conceptualized? (Paper II) 3. How are public attitudes toward the NBS projects shaped? How do risk-and place-related factors shape individual attitudes toward NBS? (Paper III) This dissertation follows an integrative approach of considering "place" and "risk", as well as the surrounding context, by analyzing attitudinal (i.e., individual) and contextual (i.e., systemic) factors. "Place" is mainly concerned with affective elements (e.g., bond to locality and natural environment) whereas "risk" is related to cognitive elements (e.g., threat appraisal). The surrounding context provides systemic drivers and barriers with the possibility of interfering the influence of place and risk for perceptions of NBS. To empirically address the research questions, the current status of the knowledge about people's perceptions of NBS for flood risks was investigated by conducting a systematic review (Paper I). Based on these insights, a case study of South Korea was used to demonstrate key contextual and attitudinal factors for mainstreaming NBS through the lens of experts (Paper II). Lastly, by conducting a citizen survey, it investigated the relationship between the previously discussed concepts in Papers I and II using structural equation modeling, focusing on the core concepts, namely risk and place (Paper III). As a result, Paper I identified the key topics relating to people's perceptions, including the perceived value of co-benefits, perceived effectiveness of risk reduction effectiveness, participation of stakeholders, socio-economic and place-specific conditions, environmental attitude, and uncertainty of NBS. Paper II confirmed Paper I's findings regarding attitudinal factors. In addition, several contextual hampering or stimulating factors were found to be similar to those of any emerging technologies (i.e., path dependence, lack of operational and systemic capacity). Among all, one of the distinctive features in NBS contexts, at least in the South Korean case, is the politicization of NBS, which can lead to polarization of ideas and undermine the decision-making process. Finally, Paper III provides a framework with the core topics (i.e., place and risk) that were considered critical in Paper I and Paper II. This place-based risk appraisal model (PRAM) connects people at risk and places where hazards (i.e., floods) and interventions (i.e., NBS) take place. The empirical analysis shows that, among the place-related variables, nature bonding was a positive predictor of the perceived risk-reduction effectiveness of NBS, and place identity was a negative predictor of supportive attitude. Among the risk-related variables, threat appraisal had a negative effect on perceived risk reduction effectiveness and supportive attitude, while well-communicated information, trust in flood risk management, and perceived co-benefit were positive predictors. This dissertation proves that the place and risk attributes of NBS shape people's perceptions of NBS. In order to optimize the NBS implementation, it is necessary to consider the meanings and values held in place before project implementation and how these attributes interact with individual and/or community risk profiles and other contextual factors. With the increasing necessity of using NBS to lower flood risks, these results make important suggestions for the future NBS project strategy and NBS governance.}, language = {en} } @article{Buerger2022, author = {B{\"u}rger, Gerd}, title = {A conundrum of trends}, series = {Journal of hydrology}, volume = {609}, journal = {Journal of hydrology}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0022-1694}, doi = {10.1016/j.jhydrol.2022.127745}, pages = {3}, year = {2022}, abstract = {This comment is meant to reiterate two warnings: One applies to the uncritical use of ready-made (openly available) program packages, and one to the estimation of trends in serially correlated time series. Both warnings apply to the recent publication of Lischeid et al. about lake-level trends in Germany.}, language = {en} } @article{VoitHeistermann2022, author = {Voit, Paul and Heistermann, Maik}, title = {A new index to quantify the extremeness of precipitation across scales}, series = {NHESS - Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences}, volume = {22}, journal = {NHESS - Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences}, edition = {8}, publisher = {Copernicus}, address = {Katlenburg-Lindau}, issn = {1684-9981}, doi = {10.5194/nhess-22-2791-2022}, pages = {2791 -- 2805}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Quantifying the extremeness of heavy precipitation allows for the comparison of events. Conventional quantitative indices, however, typically neglect the spatial extent or the duration, while both are important to understand potential impacts. In 2014, the weather extremity index (WEI) was suggested to quantify the extremeness of an event and to identify the spatial and temporal scale at which the event was most extreme. However, the WEI does not account for the fact that one event can be extreme at various spatial and temporal scales. To better understand and detect the compound nature of precipitation events, we suggest complementing the original WEI with a "cross-scale weather extremity index" (xWEI), which integrates extremeness over relevant scales instead of determining its maximum. Based on a set of 101 extreme precipitation events in Germany, we outline and demonstrate the computation of both WEI and xWEI. We find that the choice of the index can lead to considerable differences in the assessment of past events but that the most extreme events are ranked consistently, independently of the index. Even then, the xWEI can reveal cross-scale properties which would otherwise remain hidden. This also applies to the disastrous event from July 2021, which clearly outranks all other analyzed events with regard to both WEI and xWEI. While demonstrating the added value of xWEI, we also identify various methodological challenges along the required computational workflow: these include the parameter estimation for the extreme value distributions, the definition of maximum spatial extent and temporal duration, and the weighting of extremeness at different scales. These challenges, however, also represent opportunities to adjust the retrieval of WEI and xWEI to specific user requirements and application scenarios.}, language = {en} } @misc{Lorenz2022, type = {Master Thesis}, author = {Lorenz, Theo}, title = {Entwicklung eines Konzepts zur Umsetzung des SAMR-Modells im Geographieunterricht}, series = {Potsdamer Geographische Praxis}, journal = {Potsdamer Geographische Praxis}, number = {17}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, isbn = {978-3-86956-540-8}, issn = {2194-1599}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-53846}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-538462}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {87}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Die Gesellschaft befindet sich l{\"a}ngst in einem digitalen Transformationsprozess. Alle gesellschaftlichen Bereiche ver{\"a}ndern sich. Man spricht von einer Kultur der Digitalit{\"a}t, die den Leitmedienwechsel vom gedruckten Buch hin zum vernetzten digitalen Endger{\"a}t beschreibt. Auch die Institution „Schule" muss sich diesem Wandel {\"o}ffnen. Einen wesentlichen Schritt stellt das Strategiepapier der Kultusministerkonferenz „Bildung in der digitalen Welt" aus dem Jahr 2017 dar. Darin legt sie die wesentlichen Handlungsfelder zu einem digitalen Wandel fest und erweitert den Bildungsauftrag um die „Kompetenzen in der digitalen Welt". Das sog. SAMR-Modell stellt dabei ein geeignetes Umsetzungs- und Reflektionswerkzeug f{\"u}r den Einsatz digitaler Medien dar. Es strukturiert den Einsatz auf vier Stufen. Die beiden unteren Stufen (Substitution und Augmentation) schreiben der Art und Weise, wie die digitalen Medien genutzt werden, eine Ersatz- oder Verbesserungsfunktion des analogen Lernwerkzeuges zu. Ziel des Modells ist es aber, mithilfe hinzugewonnener digitaler M{\"o}glichkeiten, Lernen neu zu gestalten. Da das Modell aus den USA stammt, weist es weder direkten Bez{\"u}ge zum Strategiepapier der Kultusministerkonferenz noch zu den Bildungsstandards der Geographie auf. Diese wissenschaftliche Arbeit stellt diese Bez{\"u}ge her. Ziel ist es, auf der Grundlage des SAMR-Modells ein Handlungskonzept f{\"u}r Geographielehrkr{\"a}fte zu entwickeln. Es zeigt auf, wie sie sowohl fachliche Kompetenzen als auch Kompetenzen in der digitalen Welt systematisch bei den Lernenden f{\"o}rdern k{\"o}nnen.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Trautmann2022, author = {Trautmann, Tina}, title = {Understanding global water storage variations using model-data integration}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-56595}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-565954}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {VIII, 141}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Climate change is one of the greatest challenges to humanity in this century, and most noticeable consequences are expected to be impacts on the water cycle - in particular the distribution and availability of water, which is fundamental for all life on Earth. In this context, it is essential to better understand where and when water is available and what processes influence variations in water storages. While estimates of the overall terrestrial water storage (TWS) variations are available from the GRACE satellites, these represent the vertically integrated signal over all water stored in ice, snow, soil moisture, groundwater and surface water bodies. Therefore, complementary observational data and hydrological models are still required to determine the partitioning of the measured signal among different water storages and to understand the underlying processes. However, the application of large-scale observational data is limited by their specific uncertainties and the incapacity to measure certain water fluxes and storages. Hydrological models, on the other hand, vary widely in their structure and process-representation, and rarely incorporate additional observational data to minimize uncertainties that arise from their simplified representation of the complex hydrologic cycle. In this context, this thesis aims to contribute to improving the understanding of global water storage variability by combining simple hydrological models with a variety of complementary Earth observation-based data. To this end, a model-data integration approach is developed, in which the parameters of a parsimonious hydrological model are calibrated against several observational constraints, inducing GRACE TWS, simultaneously, while taking into account each data's specific strengths and uncertainties. This approach is used to investigate 3 specific aspects that are relevant for modelling and understanding the composition of large-scale TWS variations. The first study focusses on Northern latitudes, where snow and cold-region processes define the hydrological cycle. While the study confirms previous findings that seasonal dynamics of TWS are dominated by the cyclic accumulation and melt of snow, it reveals that inter-annual TWS variations on the contrary, are determined by variations in liquid water storages. Additionally, it is found to be important to consider the impact of compensatory effects of spatially heterogeneous hydrological variables when aggregating the contribution of different storage components over large areas. Hence, the determinants of TWS variations are scale-dependent and underlying driving mechanism cannot be simply transferred between spatial and temporal scales. These findings are supported by the second study for the global land areas beyond the Northern latitudes as well. This second study further identifies the considerable impact of how vegetation is represented in hydrological models on the partitioning of TWS variations. Using spatio-temporal varying fields of Earth observation-based data to parameterize vegetation activity not only significantly improves model performance, but also reduces parameter equifinality and process uncertainties. Moreover, the representation of vegetation drastically changes the contribution of different water storages to overall TWS variability, emphasizing the key role of vegetation for water allocation, especially between sub-surface and delayed water storages. However, the study also identifies parameter equifinality regarding the decay of sub-surface and delayed water storages by either evapotranspiration or runoff, and thus emphasizes the need for further constraints hereof. The third study focuses on the role of river water storage, in particular whether it is necessary to include computationally expensive river routing for model calibration and validation against the integrated GRACE TWS. The results suggest that river routing is not required for model calibration in such a global model-data integration approach, due to the larger influence other observational constraints, and the determinability of certain model parameters and associated processes are identified as issues of greater relevance. In contrast to model calibration, considering river water storage derived from routing schemes can already significantly improve modelled TWS compared to GRACE observations, and thus should be considered for model evaluation against GRACE data. Beyond these specific findings that contribute to improved understanding and modelling of large-scale TWS variations, this thesis demonstrates the potential of combining simple modeling approaches with diverse Earth observational data to improve model simulations, overcome inconsistencies of different observational data sets, and identify areas that require further research. These findings encourage future efforts to take advantage of the increasing number of diverse global observational data.}, language = {en} } @article{MtilatilaBronstertVormoor2022, author = {Mtilatila, Lucy Mphatso Ng'ombe and Bronstert, Axel and Vormoor, Klaus Josef}, title = {Temporal evaluation and projections of meteorological droughts in the Greater Lake Malawi Basin, Southeast Africa}, series = {Frontiers in Water}, journal = {Frontiers in Water}, publisher = {Frontiers Media S.A.}, address = {Lausanne, Schweiz}, issn = {2624-9375}, doi = {10.3389/frwa.2022.1041452}, pages = {1 -- 16}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The study examined the potential future changes of drought characteristics in the Greater Lake Malawi Basin in Southeast Africa. This region strongly depends on water resources to generate electricity and food. Future projections (considering both moderate and high emission scenarios) of temperature and precipitation from an ensemble of 16 bias-corrected climate model combinations were blended with a scenario-neutral response surface approach to analyses changes in: (i) the meteorological conditions, (ii) the meteorological water balance, and (iii) selected drought characteristics such as drought intensity, drought months, and drought events, which were derived from the Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index. Changes were analyzed for a near-term (2021-2050) and far-term period (2071-2100) with reference to 1976-2005. The effect of bias-correction (i.e., empirical quantile mapping) on the ability of the climate model ensemble to reproduce observed drought characteristics as compared to raw climate projections was also investigated. Results suggest that the bias-correction improves the climate models in terms of reproducing temperature and precipitation statistics but not drought characteristics. Still, despite the differences in the internal structures and uncertainties that exist among the climate models, they all agree on an increase of meteorological droughts in the future in terms of higher drought intensity and longer events. Drought intensity is projected to increase between +25 and +50\% during 2021-2050 and between +131 and +388\% during 2071-2100. This translates into +3 to +5, and +7 to +8 more drought months per year during both periods, respectively. With longer lasting drought events, the number of drought events decreases. Projected droughts based on the high emission scenario are 1.7 times more severe than droughts based on the moderate scenario. That means that droughts in this region will likely become more severe in the coming decades. Despite the inherent high uncertainties of climate projections, the results provide a basis in planning and (water-)managing activities for climate change adaptation measures in Malawi. This is of particular relevance for water management issues referring hydro power generation and food production, both for rain-fed and irrigated agriculture.}, language = {en} } @misc{VoitHeistermann2022, author = {Voit, Paul and Heistermann, Maik}, title = {A new index to quantify the extremeness of precipitation across scales}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {1283}, issn = {1866-8372}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-57089}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-570893}, pages = {2791 -- 2805}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Quantifying the extremeness of heavy precipitation allows for the comparison of events. Conventional quantitative indices, however, typically neglect the spatial extent or the duration, while both are important to understand potential impacts. In 2014, the weather extremity index (WEI) was suggested to quantify the extremeness of an event and to identify the spatial and temporal scale at which the event was most extreme. However, the WEI does not account for the fact that one event can be extreme at various spatial and temporal scales. To better understand and detect the compound nature of precipitation events, we suggest complementing the original WEI with a "cross-scale weather extremity index" (xWEI), which integrates extremeness over relevant scales instead of determining its maximum. Based on a set of 101 extreme precipitation events in Germany, we outline and demonstrate the computation of both WEI and xWEI. We find that the choice of the index can lead to considerable differences in the assessment of past events but that the most extreme events are ranked consistently, independently of the index. Even then, the xWEI can reveal cross-scale properties which would otherwise remain hidden. This also applies to the disastrous event from July 2021, which clearly outranks all other analyzed events with regard to both WEI and xWEI. While demonstrating the added value of xWEI, we also identify various methodological challenges along the required computational workflow: these include the parameter estimation for the extreme value distributions, the definition of maximum spatial extent and temporal duration, and the weighting of extremeness at different scales. These challenges, however, also represent opportunities to adjust the retrieval of WEI and xWEI to specific user requirements and application scenarios.}, language = {en} } @article{MtilatilaBronstertVormoor2022, author = {Mtilatila, Lucy Mphatso Ng'ombe and Bronstert, Axel and Vormoor, Klaus Josef}, title = {Temporal evaluation and projections of meteorological droughts in the Greater Lake Malawi Basin, Southeast Africa}, series = {Frontiers in water}, volume = {4}, journal = {Frontiers in water}, publisher = {Frontiers Media}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {2624-9375}, doi = {10.3389/frwa.2022.1041452}, pages = {16}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The study examined the potential future changes of drought characteristics in the Greater Lake Malawi Basin in Southeast Africa. This region strongly depends on water resources to generate electricity and food. Future projections (considering both moderate and high emission scenarios) of temperature and precipitation from an ensemble of 16 bias-corrected climate model combinations were blended with a scenario-neutral response surface approach to analyses changes in: (i) the meteorological conditions, (ii) the meteorological water balance, and (iii) selected drought characteristics such as drought intensity, drought months, and drought events, which were derived from the Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index. Changes were analyzed for a near-term (2021-2050) and far-term period (2071-2100) with reference to 1976-2005. The effect of bias-correction (i.e., empirical quantile mapping) on the ability of the climate model ensemble to reproduce observed drought characteristics as compared to raw climate projections was also investigated. Results suggest that the bias-correction improves the climate models in terms of reproducing temperature and precipitation statistics but not drought characteristics. Still, despite the differences in the internal structures and uncertainties that exist among the climate models, they all agree on an increase of meteorological droughts in the future in terms of higher drought intensity and longer events. Drought intensity is projected to increase between +25 and +50\% during 2021-2050 and between +131 and +388\% during 2071-2100. This translates into +3 to +5, and +7 to +8 more drought months per year during both periods, respectively. With longer lasting drought events, the number of drought events decreases. Projected droughts based on the high emission scenario are 1.7 times more severe than droughts based on the moderate scenario. That means that droughts in this region will likely become more severe in the coming decades. Despite the inherent high uncertainties of climate projections, the results provide a basis in planning and (water-)managing activities for climate change adaptation measures in Malawi. This is of particular relevance for water management issues referring hydro power generation and food production, both for rain-fed and irrigated agriculture.}, language = {en} } @misc{SeleemAyzelCostaTomazdeSouzaetal.2022, author = {Seleem, Omar and Ayzel, Georgy and Costa Tomaz de Souza, Arthur and Bronstert, Axel and Heistermann, Maik}, title = {Towards urban flood susceptibility mapping using data-driven models in Berlin, Germany}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {1297}, issn = {1866-8372}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-57680}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-576806}, pages = {1640 -- 1662}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Identifying urban pluvial flood-prone areas is necessary but the application of two-dimensional hydrodynamic models is limited to small areas. Data-driven models have been showing their ability to map flood susceptibility but their application in urban pluvial flooding is still rare. A flood inventory (4333 flooded locations) and 11 factors which potentially indicate an increased hazard for pluvial flooding were used to implement convolutional neural network (CNN), artificial neural network (ANN), random forest (RF) and support vector machine (SVM) to: (1) Map flood susceptibility in Berlin at 30, 10, 5, and 2 m spatial resolutions. (2) Evaluate the trained models' transferability in space. (3) Estimate the most useful factors for flood susceptibility mapping. The models' performance was validated using the Kappa, and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). The results indicated that all models perform very well (minimum AUC = 0.87 for the testing dataset). The RF models outperformed all other models at all spatial resolutions and the RF model at 2 m spatial resolution was superior for the present flood inventory and predictor variables. The majority of the models had a moderate performance for predictions outside the training area based on Kappa evaluation (minimum AUC = 0.8). Aspect and altitude were the most influencing factors on the image-based and point-based models respectively. Data-driven models can be a reliable tool for urban pluvial flood susceptibility mapping wherever a reliable flood inventory is available.}, language = {en} } @article{SeleemAyzelCostaTomazdeSouzaetal.2022, author = {Seleem, Omar and Ayzel, Georgy and Costa Tomaz de Souza, Arthur and Bronstert, Axel and Heistermann, Maik}, title = {Towards urban flood susceptibility mapping using data-driven models in Berlin, Germany}, series = {Geomatics, natural hazards and risk}, volume = {13}, journal = {Geomatics, natural hazards and risk}, number = {1}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis}, address = {London}, issn = {1947-5705}, doi = {10.1080/19475705.2022.2097131}, pages = {1640 -- 1662}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Identifying urban pluvial flood-prone areas is necessary but the application of two-dimensional hydrodynamic models is limited to small areas. Data-driven models have been showing their ability to map flood susceptibility but their application in urban pluvial flooding is still rare. A flood inventory (4333 flooded locations) and 11 factors which potentially indicate an increased hazard for pluvial flooding were used to implement convolutional neural network (CNN), artificial neural network (ANN), random forest (RF) and support vector machine (SVM) to: (1) Map flood susceptibility in Berlin at 30, 10, 5, and 2 m spatial resolutions. (2) Evaluate the trained models' transferability in space. (3) Estimate the most useful factors for flood susceptibility mapping. The models' performance was validated using the Kappa, and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). The results indicated that all models perform very well (minimum AUC = 0.87 for the testing dataset). The RF models outperformed all other models at all spatial resolutions and the RF model at 2 m spatial resolution was superior for the present flood inventory and predictor variables. The majority of the models had a moderate performance for predictions outside the training area based on Kappa evaluation (minimum AUC = 0.8). Aspect and altitude were the most influencing factors on the image-based and point-based models respectively. Data-driven models can be a reliable tool for urban pluvial flood susceptibility mapping wherever a reliable flood inventory is available.}, language = {en} } @misc{MtilatilaBronstertVormoor2022, author = {Mtilatila, Lucy Mphatso Ng'ombe and Bronstert, Axel and Vormoor, Klaus Josef}, title = {Temporal evaluation and projections of meteorological droughts in the Greater Lake Malawi Basin, Southeast Africa}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {1287}, issn = {1866-8372}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-57128}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-571284}, pages = {16}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The study examined the potential future changes of drought characteristics in the Greater Lake Malawi Basin in Southeast Africa. This region strongly depends on water resources to generate electricity and food. Future projections (considering both moderate and high emission scenarios) of temperature and precipitation from an ensemble of 16 bias-corrected climate model combinations were blended with a scenario-neutral response surface approach to analyses changes in: (i) the meteorological conditions, (ii) the meteorological water balance, and (iii) selected drought characteristics such as drought intensity, drought months, and drought events, which were derived from the Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index. Changes were analyzed for a near-term (2021-2050) and far-term period (2071-2100) with reference to 1976-2005. The effect of bias-correction (i.e., empirical quantile mapping) on the ability of the climate model ensemble to reproduce observed drought characteristics as compared to raw climate projections was also investigated. Results suggest that the bias-correction improves the climate models in terms of reproducing temperature and precipitation statistics but not drought characteristics. Still, despite the differences in the internal structures and uncertainties that exist among the climate models, they all agree on an increase of meteorological droughts in the future in terms of higher drought intensity and longer events. Drought intensity is projected to increase between +25 and +50\% during 2021-2050 and between +131 and +388\% during 2071-2100. This translates into +3 to +5, and +7 to +8 more drought months per year during both periods, respectively. With longer lasting drought events, the number of drought events decreases. Projected droughts based on the high emission scenario are 1.7 times more severe than droughts based on the moderate scenario. That means that droughts in this region will likely become more severe in the coming decades. Despite the inherent high uncertainties of climate projections, the results provide a basis in planning and (water-)managing activities for climate change adaptation measures in Malawi. This is of particular relevance for water management issues referring hydro power generation and food production, both for rain-fed and irrigated agriculture.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Burgold2022, author = {Burgold, Julia}, title = {Erfahrung und Reflexion von Obdachlosigkeit}, series = {Potsdamer Geographische Praxis}, journal = {Potsdamer Geographische Praxis}, number = {18}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, isbn = {978-3-86956-541-5}, issn = {2194-1599}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-55393}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-553932}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {342}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Die Arbeit gibt einen Einblick in die Verst{\"a}ndigungspraxen bei Stadtf{\"u}hrungen mit (ehemaligen) Obdachlosen, die in ihrem Selbstverst{\"a}ndnis auf die Herstellung von Verst{\"a}ndnis, Toleranz und Anerkennung f{\"u}r von Obdachlosigkeit betroffene Personen zielen. Zun{\"a}chst wird in den Diskurs des Slumtourismus eingef{\"u}hrt und, angesichts der Vielfalt der damit verbundenen Erscheinungsformen, Slumming als organisierte Begegnung mit sozialer Ungleichheit definiert. Die zentralen Diskurslinien und die darin eingewobenen moralischen Positionen werden nachvollzogen und im Rahmen der eigenommenen wissenssoziologischen Perspektive als Ausdruck einer per se polykontexturalen Praxis re-interpretiert. Slumming erscheint dann als eine organisierte Begegnung von Lebensformen, die sich in einer Weise fremd sind, als dass ein unmittelbares Verstehen unwahrscheinlich erscheint und genau aus diesem Grund auf der Basis von g{\"a}ngigen Interpretationen des Common Sense ausgehandelt werden muss. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht die vorliegende Arbeit, wie sich Teilnehmer und Stadtf{\"u}hrer {\"u}ber die Erfahrung der Obdachlosigkeit praktisch verst{\"a}ndigen und welcher Art das hier{\"u}ber erzeugte Verst{\"a}ndnis f{\"u}r die im {\"o}ffentlichen Diskurs mit vielf{\"a}ltigen stigmatisierenden Zuschreibungen versehenen Obdachlosen ist. Dabei interessiert besonders, in Bezug auf welche Aspekte der Erfahrung von Obdachlosigkeit ein gemeinsames Verst{\"a}ndnis m{\"o}glich wird und an welchen Stellen dieses an Grenzen ger{\"a}t. Dazu wurden die Gespr{\"a}chsverl{\"a}ufe auf neun Stadtf{\"u}hrungen mit (ehemaligen) obdachlosen Stadtf{\"u}hrern unterschiedlicher Anbieter im deutschsprachigen Raum verschriftlicht und mit dem Verfahren der Dokumentarischen Methode ausgewertet. Die vergleichende Betrachtung der Verst{\"a}ndigungspraxen er{\"o}ffnet nicht zuletzt eine differenzierte Perspektive auf die in den Prozessen der Verst{\"a}ndigung immer schon eingewobenen Anerkennungspraktiken. Mit Blick auf die moralische Debatte um organisierte Begegnungen mit sozialer Ungleichheit wird dadurch eine ethische Perspektive angeregt, in deren Zentrum Fragen zur Vermittlungsarbeit stehen.}, language = {de} } @article{RadosavljevicLantuitKnoblauchetal.2022, author = {Radosavljevic, Boris and Lantuit, Hugues and Knoblauch, Christian and Couture, Nicole and Herzschuh, Ulrike and Fritz, Michael}, title = {Arctic nearshore sediment dynamics - an example from Herschel Island - Qikiqtaruk, Canada}, series = {Journal of marine science and engineering}, volume = {10}, journal = {Journal of marine science and engineering}, number = {11}, publisher = {MDPI}, address = {Basel}, issn = {2077-1312}, doi = {10.3390/jmse10111589}, pages = {18}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Increasing arctic coastal erosion rates imply a greater release of sediments and organic matter into the coastal zone. With 213 sediment samples taken around Herschel Island-Qikiqtaruk, Canadian Beaufort Sea, we aimed to gain new insights on sediment dynamics and geochemical properties of a shallow arctic nearshore zone. Spatial characteristics of nearshore sediment texture (moderately to poorly sorted silt) are dictated by hydrodynamic processes, but ice-related processes also play a role. We determined organic matter (OM) distribution and inferred the origin and quality of organic carbon by C/N ratios and stable carbon isotopes delta C-13. The carbon content was higher offshore and in sheltered areas (mean: 1.0 wt.\%., S.D.: 0.9) and the C/N ratios also showed a similar spatial pattern (mean: 11.1, S.D.: 3.1), while the delta C-13 (mean: -26.4 parts per thousand VPDB, S.D.: 0.4) distribution was more complex. We compared the geochemical parameters of our study with terrestrial and marine samples from other studies using a bootstrap approach. Sediments of the current study contained 6.5 times and 1.8 times less total organic carbon than undisturbed and disturbed terrestrial sediments, respectively. Therefore, degradation of OM and separation of carbon pools take place on land and continue in the nearshore zone, where OM is leached, mineralized, or transported beyond the study area.}, language = {en} } @article{KawaCucchiRubinetal.2022, author = {Kawa, Nura and Cucchi, Karina and Rubin, Yoram and Attinger, Sabine and Hesse, Falk}, title = {Defining Hydrogeological Site Similarity with Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering}, series = {Groundwater : journal of the Association of Ground-Water Scientists and Engineers, a division of the National Ground Water Association}, journal = {Groundwater : journal of the Association of Ground-Water Scientists and Engineers, a division of the National Ground Water Association}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {0017-467X}, doi = {10.1111/gwat.13261}, pages = {11}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Hydrogeological information about an aquifer is difficult and costly to obtain, yet essential for the efficient management of groundwater resources. Transferring information from sampled sites to a specific site of interest can provide information when site-specific data is lacking. Central to this approach is the notion of site similarity, which is necessary for determining relevant sites to include in the data transfer process. In this paper, we present a data-driven method for defining site similarity. We apply this method to selecting groups of similar sites from which to derive prior distributions for the Bayesian estimation of hydraulic conductivity measurements at sites of interest. We conclude that there is now a unique opportunity to combine hydrogeological expertise with data-driven methods to improve the predictive ability of stochastic hydrogeological models.}, language = {en} } @article{DallmeyerKleinenClaussenetal.2022, author = {Dallmeyer, Anne and Kleinen, Thomas and Claussen, Martin and Weitzel, Nils and Cao, Xianyong and Herzschuh, Ulrike}, title = {The deglacial forest conundrum}, series = {Nature Communications}, volume = {13}, journal = {Nature Communications}, number = {1}, publisher = {Nature Publishing Group UK}, address = {[London]}, issn = {2041-1723}, doi = {10.1038/s41467-022-33646-6}, pages = {10}, year = {2022}, abstract = {How fast the Northern Hemisphere (NH) forest biome tracks strongly warming climates is largely unknown. Regional studies reveal lags between decades and millennia. Here we report a conundrum: Deglacial forest expansion in the NH extra-tropics occurs approximately 4000 years earlier in a transient MPI-ESM1.2 simulation than shown by pollen-based biome reconstructions. Shortcomings in the model and the reconstructions could both contribute to this mismatch, leaving the underlying causes unresolved. The simulated vegetation responds within decades to simulated climate changes, which agree with pollen-independent reconstructions. Thus, we can exclude climate biases as main driver for differences. Instead, the mismatch points at a multi-millennial disequilibrium of the NH forest biome to the climate signal. Therefore, the evaluation of time-slice simulations in strongly changing climates with pollen records should be critically reassessed. Our results imply that NH forests may be responding much slower to ongoing climate changes than Earth System Models predict.
Deglacial forest expansion in the Northern Hemisphere poses a conundrum: Model results agree with the climate signal but are several millennia ahead of reconstructed forest dynamics. The underlying causes remain unsolved.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Fischer2022, author = {Fischer, Melanie}, title = {Outburst floods in the Greater Himalayas}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-56997}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-569972}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xviii, 155}, year = {2022}, abstract = {High-mountain regions provide valuable ecosystem services, including food, water, and energy production, to more than 900 million people worldwide. Projections hold, that this population number will rapidly increase in the next decades, accompanied by a continued urbanisation of cities located in mountain valleys. One of the manifestations of this ongoing socio-economic change of mountain societies is a rise in settlement areas and transportation infrastructure while an increased power need fuels the construction of hydropower plants along rivers in the high-mountain regions of the world. However, physical processes governing the cryosphere of these regions are highly sensitive to changes in climate and a global warming will likely alter the conditions in the headwaters of high-mountain rivers. One of the potential implications of this change is an increase in frequency and magnitude of outburst floods - highly dynamic flows capable of carrying large amounts of water and sediments. Sudden outbursts from lakes formed behind natural dams are complex geomorphological processes and are often part of a hazard cascade. In contrast to other types of natural hazards in high-alpine areas, for example landslides or avalanches, outburst floods are highly infrequent. Therefore, observations and data describing for example the mode of outburst or the hydraulic properties of the downstream propagating flow are very limited, which is a major challenge in contemporary (glacial) lake outburst flood research. Although glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and landslide-dammed lake outburst floods (LLOFs) are rare, a number of documented events caused high fatality counts and damage. The highest documented losses due to outburst floods since the start of the 20th century were induced by only a few high-discharge events. Thus, outburst floods can be a significant hazard to downvalley communities and infrastructure in high-mountain regions worldwide. This thesis focuses on the Greater Himalayan region, a vast mountain belt stretching across 0.89 million km2. Although potentially hundreds of outburst floods have occurred there since the beginning of the 20th century, data on these events is still scarce. Projections of cryospheric change, including glacier-mass wastage and permafrost degradation, will likely result in an overall increase of the water volume stored in meltwater lakes as well as the destabilisation of mountain slopes in the Greater Himalayan region. Thus, the potential for outburst floods to affect the increasingly more densely populated valleys of this mountain belt is also likely to increase in the future. A prime example of one of these valleys is the Pokhara valley in Nepal, which is drained by the Seti Khola, a river crossing one of the steepest topographic gradients in the Himalayas. This valley is also home to Nepal's second largest, rapidly growing city, Pokhara, which currently has a population of more than half a million people - some of which live in informal settlements within the floodplain of the Seti Khola. Although there is ample evidence for past outburst floods along this river in recent and historic times, these events have hardly been quantified. The main motivation of my thesis is to address the data scarcity on past and potential future outburst floods in the Greater Himalayan region, both at a regional and at a local scale. For the former, I compiled an inventory of >3,000 moraine-dammed lakes, of which about 1\% had a documented sudden failure in the past four decades. I used this data to test whether a number of predictors that have been widely applied in previous GLOF assessments are statistically relevant when estimating past GLOF susceptibility. For this, I set up four Bayesian multi-level logistic regression models, in which I explored the credibility of the predictors lake area, lake-area dynamics, lake elevation, parent-glacier-mass balance, and monsoonality. By using a hierarchical approach consisting of two levels, this probabilistic framework also allowed for spatial variability on GLOF susceptibility across the vast study area, which until now had not been considered in studies of this scale. The model results suggest that in the Nyainqentanglha and Eastern Himalayas - regions with strong negative glacier-mass balances - lakes have been more prone to release GLOFs than in regions with less negative or even stable glacier-mass balances. Similarly, larger lakes in larger catchments had, on average, a higher probability to have had a GLOF in the past four decades. Yet, monsoonality, lake elevation, and lake-area dynamics were more ambiguous. This challenges the credibility of a lake's rapid growth in surface area as an indicator of a pending outburst; a metric that has been applied to regional GLOF assessments worldwide. At a local scale, my thesis aims to overcome data scarcity concerning the flow characteristics of the catastrophic May 2012 flood along the Seti Khola, which caused 72 fatalities, as well as potentially much larger predecessors, which deposited >1 km³ of sediment in the Pokhara valley between the 12th and 14th century CE. To reconstruct peak discharges, flow depths, and flow velocities of the 2012 flood, I mapped the extents of flood sediments from RapidEye satellite imagery and used these as a proxy for inundation limits. To constrain the latter for the Mediaeval events, I utilised outcrops of slackwater deposits in the fills of tributary valleys. Using steady-state hydrodynamic modelling for a wide range of plausible scenarios, from meteorological (1,000 m³ s-1) to cataclysmic outburst floods (600,000 m³ s-1), I assessed the likely initial discharges of the recent and the Mediaeval floods based on the lowest mismatch between sedimentary evidence and simulated flood limits. One-dimensional HEC-RAS simulations suggest, that the 2012 flood most likely had a peak discharge of 3,700 m³ s-1 in the upper Seti Khola and attenuated to 500 m³ s-1 when arriving in Pokhara's suburbs some 15 km downstream. Simulations of flow in two-dimensions with orders of magnitude higher peak discharges in ANUGA show extensive backwater effects in the main tributary valleys. These backwater effects match the locations of slackwater deposits and, hence, attest for the flood character of Mediaeval sediment pulses. This thesis provides first quantitative proof for the hypothesis, that the latter were linked to earthquake-triggered outbursts of large former lakes in the headwaters of the Seti Khola - producing floods with peak discharges of >50,000 m³ s-1. Building on this improved understanding of past floods along the Seti Khola, my thesis continues with an analysis of the impacts of potential future outburst floods on land cover, including built-up areas and infrastructure mapped from high-resolution satellite and OpenStreetMap data. HEC-RAS simulations of ten flood scenarios, with peak discharges ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 m³ s-1, show that the relative inundation hazard is highest in Pokhara's north-western suburbs. There, the potential effects of hydraulic ponding upstream of narrow gorges might locally sustain higher flow depths. Yet, along this reach, informal settlements and gravel mining activities are close to the active channel. By tracing the construction dynamics in two of these potentially affected informal settlements on multi-temporal RapidEye, PlanetScope, and Google Earth imagery, I found that exposure increased locally between three- to twentyfold in just over a decade (2008 to 2021). In conclusion, this thesis provides new quantitative insights into the past controls on the susceptibility of glacial lakes to sudden outburst at a regional scale and the flow dynamics of propagating flood waves released by past events at a local scale, which can aid future hazard assessments on transient scales in the Greater Himalayan region. My subsequent exploration of the impacts of potential future outburst floods to exposed infrastructure and (informal) settlements might provide valuable inputs to anticipatory assessments of multiple risks in the Pokhara valley.}, language = {en} } @misc{FischerBrettinRoessneretal.2022, author = {Fischer, Melanie and Brettin, Jana and Roessner, Sigrid and Walz, Ariane and Fort, Monique and Korup, Oliver}, title = {Rare flood scenarios for a rapidly growing high-mountain city: Pokhara, Nepal}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {1284}, issn = {1866-8372}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-57120}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-571209}, pages = {3105 -- 3123}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Pokhara (ca. 850 m a.s.l.), Nepal's second-largest city, lies at the foot of the Higher Himalayas and has more than tripled its population in the past 3 decades. Construction materials are in high demand in rapidly expanding built-up areas, and several informal settlements cater to unregulated sand and gravel mining in the Pokhara Valley's main river, the Seti Khola. This river is fed by the Sabche glacier below Annapurna III (7555 m a.s.l.), some 35 km upstream of the city, and traverses one of the steepest topographic gradients in the Himalayas. In May 2012 a sudden flood caused >70 fatalities and intense damage along this river and rekindled concerns about flood risk management. We estimate the flow dynamics and inundation depths of flood scenarios using the hydrodynamic model HEC-RAS (Hydrologic Engineering Center's River Analysis System). We simulate the potential impacts of peak discharges from 1000 to 10 000 m3 s-1 on land cover based on high-resolution Maxar satellite imagery and OpenStreetMap data (buildings and road network). We also trace the dynamics of two informal settlements near Kaseri and Yamdi with high potential flood impact from RapidEye, PlanetScope, and Google Earth imagery of the past 2 decades. Our hydrodynamic simulations highlight several sites of potential hydraulic ponding that would largely affect these informal settlements and sites of sand and gravel mining. These built-up areas grew between 3- and 20-fold, thus likely raising local flood exposure well beyond changes in flood hazard. Besides these drastic local changes, about 1 \% of Pokhara's built-up urban area and essential rural road network is in the highest-hazard zones highlighted by our flood simulations. Our results stress the need to adapt early-warning strategies for locally differing hydrological and geomorphic conditions in this rapidly growing urban watershed.}, language = {en} } @article{WagenerReineckePianosi2022, author = {Wagener, Thorsten and Reinecke, Robert and Pianosi, Francesca}, title = {On the evaluation of climate change impact models}, series = {Wiley interdisciplinary reviews : Climate change}, volume = {13}, journal = {Wiley interdisciplinary reviews : Climate change}, number = {3}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {1757-7780}, doi = {10.1002/wcc.772}, pages = {13}, year = {2022}, abstract = {In-depth understanding of the potential implications of climate change is required to guide decision- and policy-makers when developing adaptation strategies and designing infrastructure suitable for future conditions. Impact models that translate potential future climate conditions into variables of interest are needed to create the causal connection between a changing climate and its impact for different sectors. Recent surveys suggest that the primary strategy for validating such models (and hence for justifying their use) heavily relies on assessing the accuracy of model simulations by comparing them against historical observations. We argue that such a comparison is necessary and valuable, but not sufficient to achieve a comprehensive evaluation of climate change impact models. We believe that a complementary, largely observation-independent, step of model evaluation is needed to ensure more transparency of model behavior and greater robustness of scenario-based analyses. This step should address the following four questions: (1) Do modeled dominant process controls match our system perception? (2) Is my model's sensitivity to changing forcing as expected? (3) Do modeled decision levers show adequate influence? (4) Can we attribute uncertainty sources throughout the projection horizon? We believe that global sensitivity analysis, with its ability to investigate a model's response to joint variations of multiple inputs in a structured way, offers a coherent approach to address all four questions comprehensively. Such additional model evaluation would strengthen stakeholder confidence in model projections and, therefore, into the adaptation strategies derived with the help of impact models. This article is categorized under: Climate Models and Modeling > Knowledge Generation with Models Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change}, language = {en} } @article{FischerBrettinRoessneretal.2022, author = {Fischer, Melanie and Brettin, Jana and Roessner, Sigrid and Walz, Ariane and Fort, Monique and Korup, Oliver}, title = {Rare flood scenarios for a rapidly growing high-mountain city: Pokhara, Nepal}, series = {Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences}, volume = {22}, journal = {Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences}, edition = {9}, publisher = {Copernicus Publications}, address = {Katlenburg-Lindau}, issn = {1684-9981}, doi = {10.5194/nhess-22-3105-2022}, pages = {3105 -- 3123}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Pokhara (ca. 850 m a.s.l.), Nepal's second-largest city, lies at the foot of the Higher Himalayas and has more than tripled its population in the past 3 decades. Construction materials are in high demand in rapidly expanding built-up areas, and several informal settlements cater to unregulated sand and gravel mining in the Pokhara Valley's main river, the Seti Khola. This river is fed by the Sabche glacier below Annapurna III (7555 m a.s.l.), some 35 km upstream of the city, and traverses one of the steepest topographic gradients in the Himalayas. In May 2012 a sudden flood caused >70 fatalities and intense damage along this river and rekindled concerns about flood risk management. We estimate the flow dynamics and inundation depths of flood scenarios using the hydrodynamic model HEC-RAS (Hydrologic Engineering Center's River Analysis System). We simulate the potential impacts of peak discharges from 1000 to 10 000 m3 s-1 on land cover based on high-resolution Maxar satellite imagery and OpenStreetMap data (buildings and road network). We also trace the dynamics of two informal settlements near Kaseri and Yamdi with high potential flood impact from RapidEye, PlanetScope, and Google Earth imagery of the past 2 decades. Our hydrodynamic simulations highlight several sites of potential hydraulic ponding that would largely affect these informal settlements and sites of sand and gravel mining. These built-up areas grew between 3- and 20-fold, thus likely raising local flood exposure well beyond changes in flood hazard. Besides these drastic local changes, about 1 \% of Pokhara's built-up urban area and essential rural road network is in the highest-hazard zones highlighted by our flood simulations. Our results stress the need to adapt early-warning strategies for locally differing hydrological and geomorphic conditions in this rapidly growing urban watershed.}, language = {en} } @misc{VehLuetzowKharlamovaetal.2022, author = {Veh, Georg and L{\"u}tzow, Natalie and Kharlamova, Varvara and Petrakov, Dmitry and Hugonnet, Romain and Korup, Oliver}, title = {Trends, Breaks, and Biases in the Frequency of Reported Glacier Lake Outburst Floods}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, issn = {1866-8372}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-56100}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-561005}, pages = {1 -- 14}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Thousands of glacier lakes have been forming behind natural dams in high mountains following glacier retreat since the early 20th century. Some of these lakes abruptly released pulses of water and sediment with disastrous downstream consequences. Yet it remains unclear whether the reported rise of these glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs) has been fueled by a warming atmosphere and enhanced meltwater production, or simply a growing research effort. Here we estimate trends and biases in GLOF reporting based on the largest global catalog of 1,997 dated glacier-related floods in six major mountain ranges from 1901 to 2017. We find that the positive trend in the number of reported GLOFs has decayed distinctly after a break in the 1970s, coinciding with independently detected trend changes in annual air temperatures and in the annual number of field-based glacier surveys (a proxy of scientific reporting). We observe that GLOF reports and glacier surveys decelerated, while temperature rise accelerated in the past five decades. Enhanced warming alone can thus hardly explain the annual number of reported GLOFs, suggesting that temperature-driven glacier lake formation, growth, and failure are weakly coupled, or that outbursts have been overlooked. Indeed, our analysis emphasizes a distinct geographic and temporal bias in GLOF reporting, and we project that between two to four out of five GLOFs on average might have gone unnoticed in the early to mid-20th century. We recommend that such biases should be considered, or better corrected for, when attributing the frequency of reported GLOFs to atmospheric warming.}, language = {en} } @article{VehLuetzowKharlamovaetal.2022, author = {Veh, Georg and L{\"u}tzow, Natalie and Kharlamova, Varvara and Petrakov, Dmitry and Hugonnet, Romain and Korup, Oliver}, title = {Trends, Breaks, and Biases in the Frequency of Reported Glacier Lake Outburst Floods}, series = {Earth's Future}, volume = {10}, journal = {Earth's Future}, edition = {3}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Hoboken, New Jersey, United States}, issn = {2328-4277}, doi = {10.1029/2021EF002426}, pages = {1 -- 14}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Thousands of glacier lakes have been forming behind natural dams in high mountains following glacier retreat since the early 20th century. Some of these lakes abruptly released pulses of water and sediment with disastrous downstream consequences. Yet it remains unclear whether the reported rise of these glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs) has been fueled by a warming atmosphere and enhanced meltwater production, or simply a growing research effort. Here we estimate trends and biases in GLOF reporting based on the largest global catalog of 1,997 dated glacier-related floods in six major mountain ranges from 1901 to 2017. We find that the positive trend in the number of reported GLOFs has decayed distinctly after a break in the 1970s, coinciding with independently detected trend changes in annual air temperatures and in the annual number of field-based glacier surveys (a proxy of scientific reporting). We observe that GLOF reports and glacier surveys decelerated, while temperature rise accelerated in the past five decades. Enhanced warming alone can thus hardly explain the annual number of reported GLOFs, suggesting that temperature-driven glacier lake formation, growth, and failure are weakly coupled, or that outbursts have been overlooked. Indeed, our analysis emphasizes a distinct geographic and temporal bias in GLOF reporting, and we project that between two to four out of five GLOFs on average might have gone unnoticed in the early to mid-20th century. We recommend that such biases should be considered, or better corrected for, when attributing the frequency of reported GLOFs to atmospheric warming.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Zeitz2022, author = {Zeitz, Maria}, title = {Modeling the future resilience of the Greenland Ice Sheet}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-56883}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-568839}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {x, 189}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The Greenland Ice Sheet is the second-largest mass of ice on Earth. Being almost 2000 km long, more than 700 km wide, and more than 3 km thick at the summit, it holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 7m if melted completely. Despite its massive size, it is particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change: temperatures over the Greenland Ice Sheet have increased by more than 2.7◦C in the past 30 years, twice as much as the global mean temperature. Consequently, the ice sheet has been significantly losing mass since the 1980s and the rate of loss has increased sixfold since then. Moreover, it is one of the potential tipping elements of the Earth System, which might undergo irreversible change once a warming threshold is exceeded. This thesis aims at extending the understanding of the resilience of the Greenland Ice Sheet against global warming by analyzing processes and feedbacks relevant to its centennial to multi-millennial stability using ice sheet modeling. One of these feedbacks, the melt-elevation-feedback is driven by the temperature rise with decreasing altitudes: As the ice sheet melts, its thickness and surface elevation decrease, exposing the ice surface to warmer air and thus increasing the melt rates even further. The glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) can partly mitigate this melt-elevation feedback as the bedrock lifts in response to an ice load decrease, forming the negative GIA feedback. In my thesis, I show that the interaction between these two competing feedbacks can lead to qualitatively different dynamical responses of the Greenland Ice Sheet to warming - from permanent loss to incomplete recovery, depending on the feedback parameters. My research shows that the interaction of those feedbacks can initiate self-sustained oscillations of the ice volume while the climate forcing remains constant. Furthermore, the increased surface melt changes the optical properties of the snow or ice surface, e.g. by lowering their albedo, which in turn enhances melt rates - a process known as the melt-albedo feedback. Process-based ice sheet models often neglect this melt-albedo feedback. To close this gap, I implemented a simplified version of the diurnal Energy Balance Model, a computationally efficient approach that can capture the first-order effects of the melt-albedo feedback, into the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM). Using the coupled model, I show in warming experiments that the melt-albedo feedback almost doubles the ice loss until the year 2300 under the low greenhouse gas emission scenario RCP2.6, compared to simulations where the melt-albedo feedback is neglected, and adds up to 58\% additional ice loss under the high emission scenario RCP8.5. Moreover, I find that the melt-albedo feedback dominates the ice loss until 2300, compared to the melt-elevation feedback. Another process that could influence the resilience of the Greenland Ice Sheet is the warming induced softening of the ice and the resulting increase in flow. In my thesis, I show with PISM how the uncertainty in Glen's flow law impacts the simulated response to warming. In a flow line setup at fixed climatic mass balance, the uncertainty in flow parameters leads to a range of ice loss comparable to the range caused by different warming levels. While I focus on fundamental processes, feedbacks, and their interactions in the first three projects of my thesis, I also explore the impact of specific climate scenarios on the sea level rise contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet. To increase the carbon budget flexibility, some warming scenarios - while still staying within the limits of the Paris Agreement - include a temporal overshoot of global warming. I show that an overshoot by 0.4◦C increases the short-term and long-term ice loss from Greenland by several centimeters. The long-term increase is driven by the warming at high latitudes, which persists even when global warming is reversed. This leads to a substantial long-term commitment of the sea level rise contribution from the Greenland Ice Sheet. Overall, in my thesis I show that the melt-albedo feedback is most relevant for the ice loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet on centennial timescales. In contrast, the melt-elevation feedback and its interplay with the GIA feedback become increasingly relevant on millennial timescales. All of these influence the resilience of the Greenland Ice Sheet against global warming, in the near future and on the long term.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Schwanghart2022, author = {Schwanghart, Wolfgang}, title = {Digital elevation model analysis in geomorphology and natural hazards research}, year = {2022}, language = {en} } @article{HerzschuhBoehmerLietal.2022, author = {Herzschuh, Ulrike and B{\"o}hmer, Thomas and Li, Chenzhi and Cao, Xianyong and H{\´e}bert, Rapha{\"e}l and Dallmeyer, Anne and Telford, Richard J. and Kruse, Stefan}, title = {Reversals in temperature-precipitation correlations in the Northern Hemisphere extratropics during the Holocene}, series = {Geophysical research letters}, volume = {49}, journal = {Geophysical research letters}, number = {22}, publisher = {American Geophysical Union}, address = {Washington}, issn = {0094-8276}, doi = {10.1029/2022GL099730}, pages = {11}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Future precipitation levels remain uncertain because climate models have struggled to reproduce observed variations in temperature-precipitation correlations. Our analyses of Holocene proxy-based temperature-precipitation correlations and hydrological sensitivities from 2,237 Northern Hemisphere extratropical pollen records reveal a significant latitudinal dependence and temporal variations among the early, middle, and late Holocene. These proxy-based variations are largely consistent with patterns obtained from transient climate simulations (TraCE21k). While high latitudes and subtropical monsoon areas show mainly stable positive correlations throughout the Holocene, the mid-latitude pattern is temporally and spatially more variable. In particular, we identified a reversal from positive to negative temperature-precipitation correlations in the eastern North American and European mid-latitudes from the early to mid-Holocene that mainly related to slowed down westerlies and a switch to moisture-limited convection under a warm climate. Our palaeoevidence of past temperature-precipitation correlation shifts identifies those regions where simulating past and future precipitation levels might be particularly challenging.}, language = {en} } @article{vonHippelStoofLeichsenringSchulteetal.2022, author = {von Hippel, Barbara and Stoof-Leichsenring, Kathleen R. and Schulte, Luise and Seeber, Peter Andreas and Epp, Laura Saskia and Biskaborn, Boris K. and Diekmann, Bernhard and Melles, Martin and Pestryakova, Luidmila Agafyevna and Herzschuh, Ulrike}, title = {Long-term funguseplant covariation from multi-site sedimentary ancient DNA metabarcoding}, series = {Quaternary science reviews : the international multidisciplinary research and review journal}, volume = {295}, journal = {Quaternary science reviews : the international multidisciplinary research and review journal}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0277-3791}, doi = {10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107758}, pages = {18}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Climate change has a major impact on arctic and boreal terrestrial ecosystems as warming leads to northward treeline shifts, inducing consequences for heterotrophic organisms associated with the plant taxa. To unravel ecological dependencies, we address how long-term climatic changes have shaped the co-occurrence of plants and fungi across selected sites in Siberia. We investigated sedimentary ancient DNA from five lakes spanning the last 47,000 years, using the ITS1 marker for fungi and the chloroplast P6 loop marker for vegetation metabarcoding. We obtained 706 unique fungal operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and 243 taxa for the plants. We show higher OTU numbers in dry forest tundra as well as boreal forests compared to wet southern tundra. The most abundant fungal taxa in our dataset are Pseudeurotiaceae, Mortierella, Sordariomyceta, Exophiala, Oidiodendron, Protoventuria, Candida vartiovaarae, Pseudeurotium, Gryganskiella fimbricystis, and Tricho-sporiella cerebriformis. The overall fungal composition is explained by the plant composition as revealed by redundancy analysis. The fungal functional groups show antagonistic relationships in their climate susceptibility. The advance of woody taxa in response to past warming led to an increase in the abun-dance of mycorrhizae, lichens, and parasites, while yeast and saprotroph distribution declined. We also show co-occurrences between Salicaceae, Larix, and Alnus and their associated pathogens and detect higher mycorrhizal fungus diversity with the presence of Pinaceae. Under future warming, we can expect feedbacks between fungus composition and plant diversity changes which will affect forest advance, species diversity, and ecosystem stability in arctic regions.}, language = {en} } @article{MiesnerHerzschuhPestryakovaetal.2022, author = {Miesner, Timon and Herzschuh, Ulrike and Pestryakova, Luidmila Agafyevna and Wieczorek, Mareike and Zakharov, Evgenii S. and Kolmogorov, Alexei I. and Davydova, Paraskovya V. and Kruse, Stefan}, title = {Forest structure and individual tree inventories of northeastern Siberia along climatic gradients}, series = {Earth system science data : ESSD}, volume = {14}, journal = {Earth system science data : ESSD}, number = {12}, publisher = {Copernicus}, address = {G{\"o}ttingen}, issn = {1866-3508}, doi = {10.5194/essd-14-5695-2022}, pages = {5695 -- 5716}, year = {2022}, abstract = {We compile a data set of forest surveys from expeditions to the northeast of the Russian Federation, in Krasnoyarsk Krai, the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), and the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug (59-73 degrees N, 97-169 degrees E), performed between the years 2011 and 2021. The region is characterized by permafrost soils and forests dominated by larch (Larix gmelinii Rupr. and Larix cajanderi Mayr). Our data set consists of a plot database describing 226 georeferenced vegetation survey plots and a tree database with information about all the trees on these plots. The tree database, consisting of two tables with the same column names, contains information on the height, species, and vitality of 40 289 trees. A subset of the trees was subject to a more detailed inventory, which recorded the stem diameter at base and at breast height, crown diameter, and height of the beginning of the crown. We recorded heights up to 28.5 m (median 2.5 m) and stand densities up to 120 000 trees per hectare (median 1197 ha(-1)), with both values tending to be higher in the more southerly areas. Observed taxa include Larix Mill., Pinus L., Picea A. Dietr., Abies Mill., Salix L., Betula L., Populus L., Alnus Mill., and Ulmus L. In this study, we present the forest inventory data aggregated per plot. Additionally, we connect the data with different remote sensing data products to find out how accurately forest structure can be predicted from such products. Allometries were calculated to obtain the diameter from height measurements for every species group. For Larix, the most frequent of 10 species groups, allometries depended also on the stand density, as denser stands are characterized by thinner trees, relative to height. The remote sensing products used to compare against the inventory data include climate, forest biomass, canopy height, and forest loss or disturbance. We find that the forest metrics measured in the field can only be reconstructed from the remote sensing data to a limited extent, as they depend on local properties. This illustrates the need for ground inventories like those data we present here. The data can be used for studying the forest structure of northeastern Siberia and for the calibration and validation of remotely sensed data.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Kemter2022, author = {Kemter, Matthias}, title = {River floods in a changing world}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-55856}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-558564}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xvii, 120}, year = {2022}, abstract = {River floods are among the most devastating natural hazards worldwide. As their generation is highly dependent on climatic conditions, their magnitude and frequency are projected to be affected by future climate change. Therefore, it is crucial to study the ways in which a changing climate will, and already has, influenced flood generation, and thereby flood hazard. Additionally, it is important to understand how other human influences - specifically altered land cover - affect flood hazard at the catchment scale. The ways in which flood generation is influenced by climatic and land cover conditions differ substantially in different regions. The spatial variability of these effects needs to be taken into account by using consistent datasets across large scales as well as applying methods that can reflect this heterogeneity. Therefore, in the first study of this cumulative thesis a complex network approach is used to find 10 clusters of similar flood behavior among 4390 catchments in the conterminous United States. By using a consistent set of 31 hydro-climatological and land cover variables, and training a separate Random Forest model for each of the clusters, the regional controls on flood magnitude trends between 1960-2010 are detected. It is shown that changes in rainfall are the most important drivers of these trends, while they are regionally controlled by land cover conditions. While climate change is most commonly associated with flood magnitude trends, it has been shown to also influence flood timing. This can lead to trends in the size of the area across which floods occur simultaneously, the flood synchrony scale. The second study is an analysis of data from 3872 European streamflow gauges and shows that flood synchrony scales have increased in Western Europe and decreased in Eastern Europe. These changes are attributed to changes in flood generation, especially a decreasing relevance of snowmelt. Additionally, the analysis shows that both the absolute values and the trends of flood magnitudes and flood synchrony scales are positively correlated. If these trends persist in the future and are not accounted for, the combined increases of flood magnitudes and flood synchrony scales can exceed the capacities of disaster relief organizations and insurers. Hazard cascades are an additional way through which climate change can influence different aspects of flood hazard. The 2019/2020 wildfires in Australia, which were preceded by an unprecedented drought and extinguished by extreme rainfall that led to local flooding, present an opportunity to study the effects of multiple preceding hazards on flood hazard. All these hazards are individually affected by climate change, additionally complicating the interactions within the cascade. By estimating and analyzing the burn severity, rainfall magnitude, soil erosion and stream turbidity in differently affected tributaries of the Manning River catchment, the third study shows that even low magnitude floods can pose a substantial hazard within a cascade. This thesis shows that humanity is affecting flood hazard in multiple ways with spatially and temporarily varying consequences, many of which were previously neglected (e.g. flood synchrony scale, hazard cascades). To allow for informed decision making in risk management and climate change adaptation, it will be crucial to study these aspects across the globe and to project their trajectories into the future. The presented methods can depict the complex interactions of different flood drivers and their spatial variability, providing a basis for the assessment of future flood hazard changes. The role of land cover should be considered more in future flood risk modelling and management studies, while holistic, transferable frameworks for hazard cascade assessment will need to be designed.}, language = {en} } @article{PuppeLeueSommeretal.2022, author = {Puppe, Daniel and Leue, Martin and Sommer, Michael and Schaller, J{\"o}rg and Kaczorek, Danuta}, title = {Auto-fluorescence in phytoliths}, series = {Frontiers in Environmental Science}, volume = {10}, journal = {Frontiers in Environmental Science}, publisher = {Frontiers Media}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {2296-665X}, doi = {10.3389/fenvs.2022.915947}, pages = {14}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The detection of auto-fluorescence in phytogenic, hydrated amorphous silica depositions (phytoliths) has been found to be a promising approach to verify if phytoliths were burnt or not, especially in archaeological contexts. However, it is unknown so far at what temperature and how auto-fluorescence is induced in phytoliths. We used fluorescence microscopy, scanning electron microscope-energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy to analyze auto-fluorescence in modern phytoliths extracted from plant samples or in intact leaves of winter wheat. Leaves and extracted phytoliths were heated at different temperatures up to 600 degrees C. The aims of our experiments were i) to find out what temperature is needed to induce auto-fluorescence in phytoliths, ii) to detect temperature-dependent changes in the molecular structure of phytoliths related to auto-fluorescence, and iii) to derive a mechanistic understanding of auto-fluorescence in phytoliths. We found organic compounds associated with phytoliths to cause auto-fluorescence in phytoliths treated at temperatures below approx. 400 degrees C. In phytoliths treated at higher temperatures, i.e., 450 and 600 degrees C, phytolith auto-fluorescence was mainly caused by molecular changes of phytolith silica. Based on our results we propose that auto-fluorescence in phytoliths is caused by clusterization-triggered emissions, which are caused by overlapping electron clouds forming non-conventional chromophores. In phytoliths heated at temperatures above about 400 degrees C dihydroxylation and the formation of siloxanes result in oxygen clusters that serve as non-conventional chromophores in fluorescence events. Furthermore, SEM-EDX analyses revealed that extractable phytoliths were dominated by lumen phytoliths (62\%) compared to cell wall phytoliths (38\%). Our findings might be not only relevant in archaeological phytolith-based examinations, but also for studies on the temperature-dependent release of silicon from phytoliths and the potential of long-term carbon sequestration in phytoliths.}, language = {en} } @article{McMillanGnannAraki2022, author = {McMillan, Hilary K. and Gnann, Sebastian J. and Araki, Ryoko}, title = {Large scale evaluation of relationships between hydrologic signatures and processes}, series = {Water resources research}, volume = {58}, journal = {Water resources research}, number = {6}, publisher = {American Geophysical Union}, address = {Washington}, issn = {0043-1397}, doi = {10.1029/2021WR031751}, pages = {23}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Dominant processes in a watershed are those that most strongly control hydrologic function and response. Estimating dominant processes enables hydrologists to design physically realistic streamflow generation models, design management interventions, and understand how climate and landscape features control hydrologic function. A recent approach to estimating dominant processes is through their link to hydrologic signatures, which are metrics that characterize the streamflow timeseries. Previous authors have used results from experimental watersheds to link signature values to underlying processes, but these links have not been tested on large scales. This paper fills that gap by testing signatures in large sample data sets from the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, and Brazil, and in Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) watersheds. We found that most inter-signature correlations are consistent with process interpretations, that is, signatures that are supposed to represent the same process are correlated, and most signature values are consistent with process knowledge in CZO watersheds. Some exceptions occurred, such as infiltration and saturation excess processes that were often misidentified by signatures. Signature distributions vary by country, emphasizing the importance of regional context in understanding signature-process links and in classifying signature values as "high" or "low." Not all signatures were easily transferable from single, small watersheds to large sample studies, showing that visual or process-based assessment of signatures is important before large-scale use. We provide a summary table with information on the reliability of each signature for process identification. Overall, our results provide a reference for future studies that seek to use signatures to identify hydrological processes.}, language = {en} } @article{LawrenceWilliamsNanzetal.2022, author = {Lawrence, Mark and Williams, Stephen and Nanz, Patrizia and Renn, Ortwin}, title = {Perspective Characteristics, potentials, and challenges of transdisciplinary research}, series = {One Earth}, volume = {5}, journal = {One Earth}, number = {1}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {2590-3322}, doi = {10.1016/j.oneear.2021.12.010}, pages = {44 -- 61}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Resolving the grand challenges and wicked problems of the Anthropocene will require skillfully combining a broad range of knowledge and understandings-both scientific and non-scientific-of Earth systems and human societies. One approach to this is transdisciplinary research, which has gained considerable interest over the last few decades, resulting in an extensive body of literature about transdisciplinarity. However, this has in turn led to the challenge that developing a good understanding of transdisciplinary research can require extensive effort. Here we provide a focused overview and perspective for disciplinary and interdisciplinary researchers who are interested in efficiently obtaining a solid understanding of transdisciplinarity. We describe definitions, characteristics, schools of thought, and an exemplary three-phase model of transdisciplinary research. We also discuss three key challenges that transdisciplinary research faces in the context of addressing the broader challenges of the Anthropocene, and we consider approaches to dealing with these specific challenges, based especially on our experiences with building up transdisciplinary research projects at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies.}, language = {en} } @article{SchulteLiLisovskietal.2022, author = {Schulte, Luise and Li, Chenzhi and Lisovski, Simeon and Herzschuh, Ulrike}, title = {Forest-permafrost feedbacks and glacial refugia help explain the unequal distribution of larch across continents}, series = {Journal of biogeography}, volume = {49}, journal = {Journal of biogeography}, number = {10}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {0305-0270}, doi = {10.1111/jbi.14456}, pages = {1825 -- 1838}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Aim: The continental-scale distribution of plant functional types, such as evergreen and summergreen needle-leaf forest, is assumed to be determined by contemporary climate. However, the distribution of summergreen needle-leaf forest of larch (Larix Mill.) differs markedly between the continents, despite relatively similar climatic conditions. The reasons for these differences are little understood. Our aim is to identify potential triggers and drivers of the current distribution patterns by comparing species' bioclimatic niches, glacial refugia and postglacial recolonization patterns. Location: Northern hemisphere. Taxon: Species of the genus Larix (Mill.). Methods: We compare species distribution and dominance using species ranges and sites of dominance, as well as their occurrence on modelled permafrost extent, and active layer thickness (ALT). We compare the bioclimatic niches and calculate the niche overlap between species, using the same data in addition to modern climate data. We synthesize pollen, macrofossil and ancient DNA palaeo-evidence of past Larix occurrences of the last 60,000 years and track differences in distribution patterns through time. Results: Bioclimatic niches show large overlaps between Asian larch species and American Larix laricina. The distribution across various degrees of permafrost extent is distinctly different for Asian L. gmelinii and L. cajanderi compared to the other species, whereas the distribution on different depths of ALT is more similar among Asian and American species. Northern glacial refugia for Larix are only present in eastern Asia and Alaska. Main Conclusion: The dominance of summergreen larches in Asia, where evergreen conifers dominate most of the rest of the boreal forests, is dependent on the interaction of several factors which allows Asian L. gmelinii and L. cajanderi to dominate where these factors coincide. These factors include the early postglacial spread out of northern glacial refugia in the absence of competitors as well as a positive feedback mechanism between frozen ground and forest.}, language = {en} } @article{SiegThieken2022, author = {Sieg, Tobias and Thieken, Annegret}, title = {Improving flood impact estimations}, series = {Environmental research letters}, volume = {17}, journal = {Environmental research letters}, number = {6}, publisher = {IOP Publ. Ltd.}, address = {Bristol}, issn = {1748-9326}, doi = {10.1088/1748-9326/ac6d6c}, pages = {16}, year = {2022}, abstract = {A reliable estimation of flood impacts enables meaningful flood risk management and rapid assessments of flood impacts shortly after a flood. The flood in 2021 in Central Europe and the analysis of its impacts revealed that these estimations are still inadequate. Therefore, we investigate the influence of different data sets and methods aiming to improve flood impact estimates. We estimated economic flood impacts to private households and companies for a flood event in 2013 in Germany using (a) two different flood maps, (b) two approaches to map exposed objects based on OpenStreetMap and the Basic European Asset Map, (c) two different approaches to estimate asset values, and (d) tree-based models and Stage-Damage-Functions to describe the vulnerability. At the macro scale, water masks lead to reasonable impact estimations. At the micro and meso-scale, the identification of affected objects by means of water masks is insufficient leading to unreliable estimations. The choice of exposure data sets is most influential on the estimations. We find that reliable impact estimations are feasible with reported numbers of flood-affected objects from the municipalities. We conclude that more effort should be put in the investigation of different exposure data sets and the estimation of asset values. Furthermore, we recommend the establishment of a reporting system in the municipalities for a fast identification of flood-affected objects shortly after an event.}, language = {en} } @article{KruseHerzschuh2022, author = {Kruse, Stefan and Herzschuh, Ulrike}, title = {Regional opportunities for tundra conservation in the next 1000 years}, series = {eLife}, volume = {11}, journal = {eLife}, publisher = {eLife Sciences Publications}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {2050-084X}, doi = {10.7554/eLife.75163}, pages = {24}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The biodiversity of tundra areas in northern high latitudes is threatened by invasion of forests under global warming. However, poorly understood nonlinear responses of the treeline ecotone mean the timing and extent of tundra losses are unclear, but policymakers need such information to optimize conservation efforts. Our individual-based model LAVESI, developed for the Siberian tundra-taiga ecotone, can help improve our understanding. Consequently, we simulated treeline migration trajectories until the end of the millennium, causing a loss of tundra area when advancing north. Our simulations reveal that the treeline follows climate warming with a severe, century-long time lag, which is overcompensated by infilling of stands in the long run even when temperatures cool again. Our simulations reveal that only under ambitious mitigation strategies (relative concentration pathway 2.6) will ~30\% of original tundra areas remain in the north but separated into two disjunct refugia.}, language = {en} } @article{SchweppeThoberMuelleretal.2022, author = {Schweppe, Robert and Thober, Stephan and M{\"u}ller, Sebastian and Kelbling, Matthias and Kumar, Rohini and Attinger, Sabine and Samaniego, Luis}, title = {MPR 1.0: a stand-alone multiscale parameter regionalization tool for improved parameter estimation of land surface models}, series = {Geoscientific model development : an interactive open access journal of the European Geosciences Union}, volume = {15}, journal = {Geoscientific model development : an interactive open access journal of the European Geosciences Union}, number = {2}, publisher = {Copernicus}, address = {G{\"o}ttingen}, issn = {1991-959X}, doi = {10.5194/gmd-15-859-2022}, pages = {859 -- 882}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Distributed environmental models such as land surface models (LSMs) require model parameters in each spatial modeling unit (e.g., grid cell), thereby leading to a high-dimensional parameter space. One approach to decrease the dimensionality of the parameter space in these models is to use regularization techniques. One such highly efficient technique is the multiscale parameter regionalization (MPR) framework that translates high-resolution predictor variables (e.g., soil textural properties) into model parameters (e.g., porosity) via transfer functions (TFs) and upscaling operators that are suitable for every modeled process. This framework yields seamless model parameters at multiple scales and locations in an effective manner. However, integration of MPR into existing modeling workflows has been hindered thus far by hard-coded configurations and non-modular software designs. For these reasons, we redesigned MPR as a model-agnostic, stand-alone tool. It is a useful software for creating graphs of NetCDF variables, wherein each node is a variable and the links consist of TFs and/or upscaling operators. In this study, we present and verify our tool against a previous version, which was implemented in the mesoscale hydrologic model (mHM; https://www.ufz.de/mhm, last access: 16 January 2022). By using this tool for the generation of continental-scale soil hydraulic parameters applicable to different models (Noah-MP and HTESSEL), we showcase its general functionality and flexibility. Further, using model parameters estimated by the MPR tool leads to significant changes in long-term estimates of evapotranspiration, as compared to their default parameterizations. For example, a change of up to 25 \% in long-term evapotranspiration flux is observed in Noah-MP and HTESSEL in the Mississippi River basin. We postulate that use of the stand-alone MPR tool will considerably increase the transparency and reproducibility of the parameter estimation process in distributed (environmental) models. It will also allow a rigorous uncertainty estimation related to the errors of the predictors (e.g., soil texture fields), transfer function and its parameters, and remapping (or upscaling) algorithms.}, language = {en} } @article{DeusdaraLealSamprognaMohorCuartasetal.2022, author = {Deusdar{\´a}-Leal, Karinne and Samprogna Mohor, Guilherme and Cuartas, Luz Adriana and Seluchi, Marcelo E. and Marengo, Jose A. and Zhang, Rong and Broedel, Elisangela and Amore, Diogo de Jesus and Alval{\´a}, Regina C. S. and Cunha, Ana Paula M. A. and Gon{\c{c}}alves, Jos{\´e} A. C.}, title = {Trends and climate elasticity of streamflow in south-eastern Brazil basins}, series = {Water}, volume = {14}, journal = {Water}, number = {14}, publisher = {MDPI}, address = {Basel}, issn = {2073-4441}, doi = {10.3390/w14142245}, pages = {25}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Trends in streamflow, rainfall and potential evapotranspiration (PET) time series, from 1970 to 2017, were assessed for five important hydrological basins in Southeastern Brazil. The concept of elasticity was also used to assess the streamflow sensitivity to changes in climate variables, for annual data and 5-, 10- and 20-year moving averages. Significant negative trends in streamflow and rainfall and significant increasing trend in PET were detected. For annual analysis, elasticity revealed that 1\% decrease in rainfall resulted in 1.21-2.19\% decrease in streamflow, while 1\% increase in PET induced different reductions percentages in streamflow, ranging from 2.45\% to 9.67\%. When both PET and rainfall were computed to calculate the elasticity, results were positive for some basins. Elasticity analysis considering 20-year moving averages revealed that impacts on the streamflow were cumulative: 1\% decrease in rainfall resulted in 1.83-4.75\% decrease in streamflow, while 1\% increase in PET induced 3.47-28.3\% decrease in streamflow. This different temporal response may be associated with the hydrological memory of the basins. Streamflow appears to be more sensitive in less rainy basins. This study provides useful information to support strategic government decisions, especially when the security of water resources and drought mitigation are considered in face of climate change.}, language = {en} } @article{ThiekenMohorKreibichetal.2022, author = {Thieken, Annegret and Mohor, Guilherme Samprogna and Kreibich, Heidi and M{\"u}ller, Meike}, title = {Compound inland flood events}, series = {Natural hazards and earth system sciences : NHESS}, volume = {22}, journal = {Natural hazards and earth system sciences : NHESS}, number = {1}, publisher = {Copernicus}, address = {G{\"o}ttingen}, issn = {1561-8633}, doi = {10.5194/nhess-22-165-2022}, pages = {165 -- 185}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Several severe flood events hit Germany in recent years, with events in 2013 and 2016 being the most destructive ones, although dynamics and flood processes were very different. While the 2013 event was a slowly rising widespread fluvial flood accompanied by some severe dike breaches, the events in 2016 were fast-onset pluvial floods, which resulted in surface water flooding in some places due to limited capacities of the drainage systems and in destructive flash floods with high sediment loads and clogging in others, particularly in small steep catchments. Hence, different pathways, i.e. different routes that the water takes to reach (and potentially damage) receptors, in our case private households, can be identified in both events. They can thus be regarded as spatially compound flood events or compound inland floods. This paper analyses how differently affected residents coped with these different flood types (fluvial and pluvial) and their impacts while accounting for the different pathways (river flood, dike breach, surface water flooding and flash flood) within the compound events. The analyses are based on two data sets with 1652 (for the 2013 flood) and 601 (for the 2016 flood) affected residents who were surveyed around 9 months after each flood, revealing little socio-economic differences - except for income - between the two samples. The four pathways showed significant differences with regard to their hydraulic and financial impacts, recovery, warning processes, and coping and adaptive behaviour. There are just small differences with regard to perceived self-efficacy and responsibility, offering entry points for tailored risk communication and support to improve property-level adaptation.}, language = {en} } @article{JiaAnslanChenetal.2022, author = {Jia, Weihan and Anslan, Sten and Chen, Fahu and Cao, Xianyong and Dong, Hailiang and Dulias, Katharina and Gu, Zhengquan and Heinecke, Liv and Jiang, Hongchen and Kruse, Stefan and Kang, Wengang and Li, Kai and Liu, Sisi and Liu, Xingqi and Liu, Ying and Ni, Jian and Schwalb, Antje and Stoof-Leichsenring, Kathleen R. and Shen, Wei and Tian, Fang and Wang, Jing and Wang, Yongbo and Wang, Yucheng and Xu, Hai and Yang, Xiaoyan and Zhang, Dongju and Herzschuh, Ulrike}, title = {Sedimentary ancient DNA reveals past ecosystem and biodiversity changes on the Tibetan Plateau: overview and prospects}, series = {Quaternary science reviews : the international multidisciplinary research and review journal}, volume = {293}, journal = {Quaternary science reviews : the international multidisciplinary research and review journal}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0277-3791}, doi = {10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107703}, pages = {14}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Alpine ecosystems on the Tibetan Plateau are being threatened by ongoing climate warming and intensified human activities. Ecological time-series obtained from sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) are essential for understanding past ecosystem and biodiversity dynamics on the Tibetan Plateau and their responses to climate change at a high taxonomic resolution. Hitherto only few but promising studies have been published on this topic. The potential and limitations of using sedaDNA on the Tibetan Plateau are not fully understood. Here, we (i) provide updated knowledge of and a brief introduction to the suitable archives, region-specific taphonomy, state-of-the-art methodologies, and research questions of sedaDNA on the Tibetan Plateau; (ii) review published and ongoing sedaDNA studies from the Tibetan Plateau; and (iii) give some recommendations for future sedaDNA study designs. Based on the current knowledge of taphonomy, we infer that deep glacial lakes with freshwater and high clay sediment input, such as those from the southern and southeastern Tibetan Plateau, may have a high potential for sedaDNA studies. Metabarcoding (for microorganisms and plants), metagenomics (for ecosystems), and hybridization capture (for prehistoric humans) are three primary sedaDNA approaches which have been successfully applied on the Tibetan Plateau, but their power is still limited by several technical issues, such as PCR bias and incompleteness of taxonomic reference databases. Setting up high-quality and open-access regional taxonomic reference databases for the Tibetan Plateau should be given priority in the future. To conclude, the archival, taphonomic, and methodological conditions of the Tibetan Plateau are favorable for performing sedaDNA studies. More research should be encouraged to address questions about long-term ecological dynamics at ecosystem scale and to bring the paleoecology of the Tibetan Plateau into a new era.}, language = {en} } @article{LiuSobolevBabeykoetal.2022, author = {Liu, Sibiao and Sobolev, Stephan and Babeyko, Andrey and Pons, Micha{\"e}l}, title = {Controls of the foreland deformation pattern in the orogen-foreland shortening system}, series = {Tectonics}, volume = {41}, journal = {Tectonics}, number = {2}, publisher = {American Geophysical Union}, address = {Washington}, issn = {0278-7407}, doi = {10.1029/2021TC007121}, pages = {18}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Controls on the deformation pattern (shortening mode and tectonic style) of orogenic forelands during lithospheric shortening remain poorly understood. Here, we use high-resolution 2D thermomechanical models to demonstrate that orogenic crustal thickness and foreland lithospheric thickness significantly control the shortening mode in the foreland. Pure-shear shortening occurs when the orogenic crust is not thicker than the foreland crust or thick, but the foreland lithosphere is thin (<70-80 km, as in the Puna foreland case). Conversely, simple-shear shortening, characterized by foreland underthrusting beneath the orogen, arises when the orogenic crust is much thicker. This thickened crust results in high gravitational potential energy in the orogen, which triggers the migration of deformation to the foreland under further shortening. Our models present fully thick-skinned, fully thin-skinned, and intermediate tectonic styles in the foreland. The first tectonics forms in a pure-shear shortening mode whereas the others require a simple-shear mode and the presence of thick (>similar to 4 km) sediments that are mechanically weak (friction coefficient Following parameterization, we ran simulations with the coupled version to the near future to 2030 with a mild climate-warming scenario. We focus on three regions covering a gradient of summergreen forests in the east at Spasskaya Pad, mixed summergreen-evergreen forests close to Nyurba, and the warmest area at Lake Khamra in the southeast of Yakutia, Russia. Coupled simulations were run with the newly implemented boreal forest species and compared to runs allowing only one species at a time, as well as to simulations using just LAVESI. Results reveal that the coupled version corrects for overestimation of active layer thickness (ALT) and soil moisture, and large differences in established forests are simulated. We conclude that the coupled version can simulate the complex environment of eastern Siberia by reproducing vegetation patterns, making it an excellent tool to disentangle processes driving boreal forest dynamics.}, language = {en} } @article{AgarwalGuntuBanerjeeetal.2022, author = {Agarwal, Ankit and Guntu, Ravikumar and Banerjee, Abhirup and Gadhawe, Mayuri Ashokrao and Marwan, Norbert}, title = {A complex network approach to study the extreme precipitation patterns in a river basin}, series = {Chaos : an interdisciplinary journal of nonlinear science}, volume = {32}, journal = {Chaos : an interdisciplinary journal of nonlinear science}, number = {1}, publisher = {American Institute of Physics}, address = {Woodbury, NY}, issn = {1054-1500}, doi = {10.1063/5.0072520}, pages = {12}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The quantification of spatial propagation of extreme precipitation events is vital in water resources planning and disaster mitigation. However, quantifying these extreme events has always been challenging as many traditional methods are insufficient to capture the nonlinear interrelationships between extreme event time series. Therefore, it is crucial to develop suitable methods for analyzing the dynamics of extreme events over a river basin with a diverse climate and complicated topography. Over the last decade, complex network analysis emerged as a powerful tool to study the intricate spatiotemporal relationship between many variables in a compact way. In this study, we employ two nonlinear concepts of event synchronization and edit distance to investigate the extreme precipitation pattern in the Ganga river basin. We use the network degree to understand the spatial synchronization pattern of extreme rainfall and identify essential sites in the river basin with respect to potential prediction skills. The study also attempts to quantify the influence of precipitation seasonality and topography on extreme events. The findings of the study reveal that (1) the network degree is decreased in the southwest to northwest direction, (2) the timing of 50th percentile precipitation within a year influences the spatial distribution of degree, (3) the timing is inversely related to elevation, and (4) the lower elevation greatly influences connectivity of the sites. The study highlights that edit distance could be a promising alternative to analyze event-like data by incorporating event time and amplitude and constructing complex networks of climate extremes.}, language = {en} } @article{GuzmanAriasSamprognaMohorMendiondo2022, author = {Guzman Arias, Diego Alejandro and Samprogna Mohor, Guilherme and Mendiondo, Eduardo Mario}, title = {Multi-driver ensemble to evaluate the water utility business interruption cost induced by hydrological drought risk scenarios in Brazil}, series = {Urban water journal}, journal = {Urban water journal}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {1573-062X}, doi = {10.1080/1573062X.2022.2058564}, pages = {15}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Climate change and increasing water demand in urban environments necessitate planning water utility companies' finances. Traditionally, methods to estimate the direct water utility business interruption costs (WUBIC) caused by droughts have not been clearly established. We propose a multi-driver assessment method. We project the water yield using a hydrological model driven by regional climate models under radiative forcing scenarios. We project water demand under stationary and non-stationary conditions to estimate drought severity and duration, which are linked with pricing policies recently adopted by the Sao Paulo Water Utility Company. The results showed water insecurity. The non-stationary trend imposed larger differences in the drought resilience financial gap, suggesting that the uncertainties of WUBIC derived from demand and climate models are greater than those associated with radiative forcing scenarios. As populations increase, proactively controlling demand is recommended to avoid or minimize reactive policy changes during future drought events, repeating recent financial impacts.}, language = {en} } @article{SiegmundPanebiancoAvecillaetal.2022, author = {Siegmund, Nicole and Panebianco, Juan E. and Avecilla, Fernando and Iturri, Laura Antonela and Sommer, Michael and Buschiazzo, Daniel and Funk, Roger}, title = {From gustiness to dustiness}, series = {Atmosphere}, volume = {13}, journal = {Atmosphere}, number = {8}, publisher = {MDPI}, address = {Basel}, issn = {2073-4433}, doi = {10.3390/atmos13081173}, pages = {14}, year = {2022}, abstract = {This study delivers the first empirical data-driven analysis of the impact of turbulence induced gustiness on the fine dust emissions from a measuring field. For quantification of the gust impact, a new measure, the Gust uptake Efficiency (GuE) is introduced. GuE provides a percentage of over- or under-proportional dust uptake due to gust activity during a wind event. For the three analyzed wind events, GuE values of up to 150\% could be found, yet they significantly differed per particle size class with a tendency for lower values for smaller particles. In addition, a high-resolution correlation analysis among 31 particle size classes and wind speed was conducted; it revealed strong negative correlation coefficients for very small particles and positive correlations for bigger particles, where 5 mu m appears to be an empirical threshold dividing both directions. We conclude with a number of suggestions for further investigations: an optimized field experiment setup, a new particle size ratio (PM1/PM0.5 in addition to PM10/PM2.5), as well as a comprehensive data-driven search for an optimal wind gust definition in terms of soil erosivity.}, language = {en} } @article{IturriFunkSommeretal.2022, author = {Iturri, Laura Antonela and Funk, Roger and Sommer, Michael and Buschiazzo, Daniel}, title = {Transport preferences of P forms in wind-blown sediments of two susceptible soils}, series = {Aeolian research : an international journal on wind erosion research / International Society of Aeolian Research}, volume = {55}, journal = {Aeolian research : an international journal on wind erosion research / International Society of Aeolian Research}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam [u.a.]}, issn = {1875-9637}, doi = {10.1016/j.aeolia.2022.100776}, pages = {9}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Wind erosion of agricultural soils affects their stock of essential elements for plants, like phosphorus (P). It is known that the composition of the eroded sediments varies with height, according to the size and density of the transported substances. Aim of this study was to analyze the concentration and enrichment ratios of P forms in sediments transported by the wind. A wind-tunnel study was performed on a sandy-and a sandy loam soil in order to measure P forms concentrations in the saltating sediments. P concentrations were also measured in the particulate matter (PM) of each soil, gained with the Easy Dust Generator. In both soils, inorganic-(Pi) and organic P (Po) were preferentially transported in PM, with enrichment ratios of 1.8 and 5.5, respectively. Nevertheless, a Pi/Po of 0.9 indicated that the accumulation of the minor Po in PM was more pronounced than Pi. This agrees with P-rich light and easily erodible organic compounds, almost exclusively accumulated in PM, and in relatively heavy and less erodible minerals, like apatites, in lower height sediments. Labile P (Pl) was preferentially transported in saltating sediments of both soils. This was attributed to the selective Bray \& Kurtz I's extraction of the abundant inorganic P forms of these sediments. Total P (Pt) copied the transport trends of Pi, the major form. According to the transporting trends, Pi and Po would be re-sedimented at longer distances from the source than Pl. Outcomes become useful for modeling the influence of wind erosion on P cycling.}, language = {en} } @article{FranckeHeistermannKoehlietal.2022, author = {Francke, Till and Heistermann, Maik and K{\"o}hli, Markus and Budach, Christian and Schr{\"o}n, Martin and Oswald, Sascha Eric}, title = {Assessing the feasibility of a directional cosmic-ray neutron sensing sensor for estimating soil moisture}, series = {Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems}, volume = {11}, journal = {Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems}, publisher = {Copernicus Publ.}, address = {G{\"o}ttingen}, issn = {2193-0864}, doi = {10.5194/gi-11-75-2022}, pages = {75 -- 92}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Cosmic-ray neutron sensing (CRNS) is a non-invasive tool for measuring hydrogen pools such as soil moisture, snow or vegetation. The intrinsic integration over a radial hectare-scale footprint is a clear advantage for averaging out small-scale heterogeneity, but on the other hand the data may become hard to interpret in complex terrain with patchy land use. This study presents a directional shielding approach to prevent neutrons from certain angles from being counted while counting neutrons entering the detector from other angles and explores its potential to gain a sharper horizontal view on the surrounding soil moisture distribution. Using the Monte Carlo code URANOS (Ultra Rapid Neutron-Only Simulation), we modelled the effect of additional polyethylene shields on the horizontal field of view and assessed its impact on the epithermal count rate, propagated uncertainties and aggregation time. The results demonstrate that directional CRNS measurements are strongly dominated by isotropic neutron transport, which dilutes the signal of the targeted direction especially from the far field. For typical count rates of customary CRNS stations, directional shielding of half-spaces could not lead to acceptable precision at a daily time resolution. However, the mere statistical distinction of two rates should be feasible.}, language = {en} } @misc{FranckeHeistermannKoehlietal.2022, author = {Francke, Till and Heistermann, Maik and K{\"o}hli, Markus and Budach, Christian and Schr{\"o}n, Martin and Oswald, Sascha Eric}, title = {Assessing the feasibility of a directional cosmic-ray neutron sensing sensor for estimating soil moisture}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, issn = {1866-8372}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-54422}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-544229}, pages = {75 -- 92}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Cosmic-ray neutron sensing (CRNS) is a non-invasive tool for measuring hydrogen pools such as soil moisture, snow or vegetation. The intrinsic integration over a radial hectare-scale footprint is a clear advantage for averaging out small-scale heterogeneity, but on the other hand the data may become hard to interpret in complex terrain with patchy land use. This study presents a directional shielding approach to prevent neutrons from certain angles from being counted while counting neutrons entering the detector from other angles and explores its potential to gain a sharper horizontal view on the surrounding soil moisture distribution. Using the Monte Carlo code URANOS (Ultra Rapid Neutron-Only Simulation), we modelled the effect of additional polyethylene shields on the horizontal field of view and assessed its impact on the epithermal count rate, propagated uncertainties and aggregation time. The results demonstrate that directional CRNS measurements are strongly dominated by isotropic neutron transport, which dilutes the signal of the targeted direction especially from the far field. For typical count rates of customary CRNS stations, directional shielding of half-spaces could not lead to acceptable precision at a daily time resolution. However, the mere statistical distinction of two rates should be feasible.}, language = {en} } @article{SchmidtFranckeRottleretal.2022, author = {Schmidt, Lena Katharina and Francke, Till and Rottler, Erwin and Blume, Theresa and Sch{\"o}ber, Johannes and Bronstert, Axel}, title = {Suspended sediment and discharge dynamics in a glaciated alpine environment}, series = {Earth surface dynamics}, volume = {10}, journal = {Earth surface dynamics}, number = {3}, publisher = {Copernicus Publications}, address = {G{\"o}ttingen}, issn = {2196-632X}, doi = {10.5194/esurf-10-653-2022}, pages = {653 -- 669}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Glaciated high-alpine areas are fundamentally altered by climate change, with well-known implications for hydrology, e.g., due to glacier retreat, longer snow-free periods, and more frequent and intense summer rainstorms. While knowledge on how these hydrological changes will propagate to suspended sediment dynamics is still scarce, it is needed to inform mitigation and adaptation strategies. To understand the processes and source areas most relevant to sediment dynamics, we analyzed discharge and sediment dynamics in high temporal resolution as well as their patterns on several spatial scales, which to date few studies have done. We used a nested catchment setup in the Upper {\"O}tztal in Tyrol, Austria, where high-resolution (15 min) time series of discharge and suspended sediment concentrations are available for up to 15 years (2006-2020). The catchments of the gauges in Vent, S{\"o}lden and Tumpen range from 100 to almost 800 km2 with 10 \% to 30 \% glacier cover and span an elevation range of 930 to 3772 m a.s.l. We analyzed discharge and suspended sediment yields (SSY), their distribution in space, their seasonality and spatial differences therein, and the relative importance of short-term events. We complemented our analysis by linking the observations to satellite-based snow cover maps, glacier inventories, mass balances and precipitation data. Our results indicate that the areas above 2500 m a.s.l., characterized by glacier tongues and the most recently deglaciated areas, are crucial for sediment generation in all sub-catchments. This notion is supported by the synchronous spring onset of sediment export at the three gauges, which coincides with snowmelt above 2500 m but lags behind spring discharge onsets. This points at a limitation of suspended sediment supply as long as the areas above 2500 m are snow-covered. The positive correlation of annual SSY with glacier cover (among catchments) and glacier mass balances (within a catchment) further supports the importance of the glacier-dominated areas. The analysis of short-term events showed that summer precipitation events were associated with peak sediment concentrations and yields but on average accounted for only 21 \% of the annual SSY in the headwaters. These results indicate that under current conditions, thermally induced sediment export (through snow and glacier melt) is dominant in the study area. Our results extend the scientific knowledge on current hydro-sedimentological conditions in glaciated high-alpine areas and provide a baseline for studies on projected future changes in hydro-sedimentological system dynamics.}, language = {en} } @article{HoanRichterBorsigetal.2022, author = {Hoan, Tran Viet and Richter, Karl-Gerd and Borsig, Nicolas and Bauer, Jonas and Ha, Nguyen Thi and Norra, Stefan}, title = {An improved groundwater model framework for aquifer structures of the quaternary-formed sediment body in the southernmost parts of the Mekong Delta, Vietnam}, series = {Hydrology : open access journal}, volume = {9}, journal = {Hydrology : open access journal}, number = {4}, publisher = {MDPI}, address = {Basel}, issn = {2306-5338}, doi = {10.3390/hydrology9040061}, pages = {20}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The Ca Mau peninsula (CMP) is a key economic region in southern Vietnam. In recent decades, the high demand for water has increased the exploitation of groundwater, thus lowering the groundwater level and leading to risks of degradation, depletion, and land subsidence, as well as salinity intrusion in the groundwater of the whole Mekong Delta region. By using a finite element groundwater model with boundary expansion to the sea, we updated the latest data on hydrogeological profiles, groundwater levels, and exploitation. The basic model setup covers seven aquifers and seven aquitards. It is determined that the inflow along the coastline to the mainland is 39\% of the total inflow. The exploitation of the study area in 2019 was 567,364 m(3)/day. The most exploited aquifers are the upper-middle Pleistocene (qp(2-3)) and the middle Pliocene (n(2)(2)), accounting for 63.7\% and 24.6\%, respectively; the least exploited aquifers are the upper Pleistocene and the upper Miocene, accounting for 0.35\% and 0.02\%, respectively. In the deeper aquifers, qp(2-3) and n(2)(2), the change in storage is negative due to the high exploitation rate, leading to a decline in the reserves of these aquifers. These groundwater model results are the calculations of groundwater reserves from the coast to the mainland in the entire system of aquifers in the CMP. This makes groundwater decision managers, stakeholders, and others more efficient in sustainable water resources planning in the CMP and Mekong Delta (MKD).}, language = {en} } @article{SmithFoxSchwanghartetal.2022, author = {Smith, Adam G. G. and Fox, Matthew and Schwanghart, Wolfgang and Carter, Andrew}, title = {Comparing methods for calculating channel steepness index}, series = {Earth science reviews : the international geological journal bridging the gap between research articles and textbooks}, volume = {227}, journal = {Earth science reviews : the international geological journal bridging the gap between research articles and textbooks}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0012-8252}, doi = {10.1016/j.earscirev.2022.103970}, pages = {20}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Channel steepness index, k(s), is a metric derived from the stream power model that, under certain conditions, scales with relative rock uplift rate. Channel steepness index is a property of rivers, which can be relatively easily extracted from digital elevation models (DEMs). As DEM data sets are widely available for Earth and are becoming more readily available for other planetary bodies, channel steepness index represents a powerful tool for interpreting tectonic processes. However, multiple approaches to calculate channel steepness index exist. From this several important questions arise; does choice of approach change the values of channel steepness index, can values be so different that choice of approach can influence the findings of a study, and are certain approaches better than others? With the aid of a synthetic river profile and a case study from the Sierra Nevada, California, we show that values of channel steepness index vary over orders of magnitude according to the methodology used in the calculation. We explore the limitations, advantages and disadvantages of the key approaches to calculating channel steepness index, and find that choosing an appropriate approach relies on the context of a study. Given these observations, it is important that authors acknowledge the methodology used to calculate channel steepness index, to ensure that results can be contextualised and reproduced.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Schumacher2022, author = {Schumacher, Juliane}, title = {Die Regierung des Waldes}, series = {Sozial- und Kulturgeographie}, journal = {Sozial- und Kulturgeographie}, number = {50}, publisher = {transcript}, address = {Bielefeld}, isbn = {978-3-8376-6151-4}, issn = {2703-1640}, doi = {10.1515/9783839461518}, pages = {347}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Wie ver{\"a}ndert sich die Beziehung von Gesellschaften zu ihrer nat{\"u}rlichen Umgebung {\"u}ber die Zeit? Wie werden nat{\"u}rliche Systeme »in Wert« gesetzt? Und welchen Einfluss hat das auf die von uns so bezeichnete »Natur«? Am Beispiel eines Korkeichenwaldes in Marokko geht Juliane Schumacher diesen Fragen nach. Unter Bezugnahme auf Ans{\"a}tze der Politischen {\"O}kologie, der Science and Technology Studies und Foucaults Gouvernementalit{\"a}tsanalyse zeigt sie, wie sich seit der Kolonialzeit die Bewirtschaftung des Waldes ver{\"a}ndert hat. Dabei wird deutlich, wie Programme zur Integration der W{\"a}lder in globale Finanz- und Kohlenstoffm{\"a}rkte zu neuen, experimentellen Formen der »Regierung des Waldes« f{\"u}hren.}, language = {de} } @article{KhuranaHesseKleidonHildebrandtetal.2022, author = {Khurana, Swamini and Hesse, Falk and Kleidon-Hildebrandt, Anke and Thullner, Martin}, title = {Should we worry about surficial dynamics when assessing nutrient cycling in the groundwater?}, series = {Frontiers in water}, volume = {4}, journal = {Frontiers in water}, publisher = {Frontiers Media}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {2624-9375}, doi = {10.3389/frwa.2022.780297}, pages = {17}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The fluxes of water and solutes in the subsurface compartment of the Critical Zone are temporally dynamic and it is unclear how this impacts microbial mediated nutrient cycling in the spatially heterogeneous subsurface. To investigate this, we undertook numerical modeling, simulating the transport in a wide range of spatially heterogeneous domains, and the biogeochemical transformation of organic carbon and nitrogen compounds using a complex microbial community with four (4) distinct functional groups, in water saturated subsurface compartments. We performed a comprehensive uncertainty analysis accounting for varying residence times and spatial heterogeneity. While the aggregated removal of chemical species in the domains over the entire simulation period was approximately the same as that in steady state conditions, the sub-scale temporal variation of microbial biomass and chemical discharge from a domain depended strongly on the interplay of spatial heterogeneity and temporal dynamics of the forcing. We showed that the travel time and the Damkohler number (Da) can be used to predict the temporally varying chemical discharge from a spatially heterogeneous domain. In homogeneous domains, chemical discharge in temporally dynamic conditions could be double of that in the steady state conditions while microbial biomass varied up to 75\% of that in steady state conditions. In heterogeneous domains, the interquartile range of uncertainty in chemical discharge in reaction dominated systems (log(10)Da > 0) was double of that in steady state conditions. However, high heterogeneous domains resulted in outliers where chemical discharge could be as high as 10-20 times of that in steady state conditions in high flow periods. And in transport dominated systems (log(10)Da < 0), the chemical discharge could be half of that in steady state conditions in unusually low flow conditions. In conclusion, ignoring spatio-temporal heterogeneities in a numerical modeling approach may exacerbate inaccurate estimation of nutrient export and microbial biomass. The results are relevant to long-term field monitoring studies, and for homogeneous soil column-scale experiments investigating the role of temporal dynamics on microbial redox dynamics.}, language = {en} } @article{WarcholdPradhanThapaetal.2022, author = {Warchold, Anne and Pradhan, Prajal and Thapa, Pratibha and Putra, Muhammad Panji Islam Fajar and Kropp, J{\"u}rgen}, title = {Building a unified sustainable development goal database}, series = {Sustainable development}, journal = {Sustainable development}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {0968-0802}, doi = {10.1002/sd.2316}, pages = {16}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The 2020s are an essential decade for achieving the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For this, SDG research needs to provide evidence that can be translated into concrete actions. However, studies use different SDG data, resulting in incomparable findings. Researchers primarily use SDG databases provided by the United Nations (UN), the World Bank Group (WBG), and the Bertelsmann Stiftung \& Sustainable Development Solutions Network (BE-SDSN). We compile these databases into one unified SDG database and examine the effects of the data selection on our understanding of SDG interactions. Among the databases, we observed more different than similar SDG interactions. Differences in synergies and trade-offs mainly occur for SDGs that are environmentally oriented. Due to the increased data availability, the unified SDG database offers a more nuanced and reliable view of SDG interactions. Thus, the SDG data selection may lead to diverse findings, fostering actions that might neglect or exacerbate trade-offs.}, language = {en} } @article{WutzlerHudsonThieken2022, author = {Wutzler, Bianca and Hudson, Paul and Thieken, Annegret}, title = {Adaptation strategies of flood-damaged businesses in Germany}, series = {Frontiers in Water}, journal = {Frontiers in Water}, publisher = {Frontiers Media SA}, address = {Lausanne, Schweiz}, issn = {2624-9375}, doi = {10.3389/frwa.2022.932061}, pages = {13}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Flood risk management in Germany follows an integrative approach in which both private households and businesses can make an important contribution to reducing flood damage by implementing property-level adaptation measures. While the flood adaptation behavior of private households has already been widely researched, comparatively less attention has been paid to the adaptation strategies of businesses. However, their ability to cope with flood risk plays an important role in the social and economic development of a flood-prone region. Therefore, using quantitative survey data, this study aims to identify different strategies and adaptation drivers of 557 businesses damaged by a riverine flood in 2013 and 104 businesses damaged by pluvial or flash floods between 2014 and 2017. Our results indicate that a low perceived self-efficacy may be an important factor that can reduce the motivation of businesses to adapt to flood risk. Furthermore, property-owners tended to act more proactively than tenants. In addition, high experience with previous flood events and low perceived response costs could strengthen proactive adaptation behavior. These findings should be considered in business-tailored risk communication.}, language = {en} } @article{HudsonThieken2022, author = {Hudson, Paul and Thieken, Annegret}, title = {The presence of moral hazard regarding flood insurance and German private businesses}, series = {Natural hazards : journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards}, volume = {112}, journal = {Natural hazards : journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards}, number = {2}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Dordrecht [u.a.]}, issn = {0921-030X}, doi = {10.1007/s11069-022-05227-9}, pages = {1295 -- 1319}, year = {2022}, abstract = {There is a movement towards the concepts of integrated flood risk management and governance. In these concepts, each stakeholder prone to flooding is tasked with actively limiting flood impacts. Currently, relatively more research has focused upon the adaptation of private households and not on private businesses operating in flood-prone areas. This paper offers an extension of this literature on business-level flood adaptation by exploring the potential presence of moral hazard. The analyses are based on survey data collected in the aftermath of six floods across Germany between 2002 and 2013 to provide a first indication of the presence of moral hazard in private businesses. Moral hazard is where increased insurance coverage results in policyholders preparing less, increasing the risk they face, a counterproductive outcome. We present an initial study of moral hazard occurring through three channels: the performance of emergency measures during a flood, changes in precautionary behavior employed before a given flood occurred, and changes in the intention to employ additional precautionary measures after a flood. We find, much like for private households, no strong indication that moral hazard is present regarding past adaptation. However, there is a potential avenue after 2005 for insurance coverage to lower businesses' intentions to employ more adaptation measures after a flood. This has significant policy relevance such as opportunities for strengthening the link between insurance and risk reduction measures and boosting insurance coverage against flooding in general.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Krummenauer2022, author = {Krummenauer, Linda}, title = {Global heat adaptation among urban populations and its evolution under different climate futures}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-55929}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-559294}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xix, 161}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Heat and increasing ambient temperatures under climate change represent a serious threat to human health in cities. Heat exposure has been studied extensively at a global scale. Studies comparing a defined temperature threshold with the future daytime temperature during a certain period of time, had concluded an increase in threat to human health. Such findings however do not explicitly account for possible changes in future human heat adaptation and might even overestimate heat exposure. Thus, heat adaptation and its development is still unclear. Human heat adaptation refers to the local temperature to which populations are adjusted to. It can be inferred from the lowest point of the U- or V-shaped heat-mortality relationship (HMR), the Minimum Mortality Temperature (MMT). While epidemiological studies inform on the MMT at the city scale for case studies, a general model applicable at the global scale to infer on temporal change in MMTs had not yet been realised. The conventional approach depends on data availability, their robustness, and on the access to daily mortality records at the city scale. Thorough analysis however must account for future changes in the MMT as heat adaptation happens partially passively. Human heat adaptation consists of two aspects: (1) the intensity of the heat hazard that is still tolerated by human populations, meaning the heat burden they can bear and (2) the wealth-induced technological, social and behavioural measures that can be employed to avoid heat exposure. The objective of this thesis is to investigate and quantify human heat adaptation among urban populations at a global scale under the current climate and to project future adaptation under climate change until the end of the century. To date, this has not yet been accomplished. The evaluation of global heat adaptation among urban populations and its evolution under climate change comprises three levels of analysis. First, using the example of Germany, the MMT is calculated at the city level by applying the conventional method. Second, this thesis compiles a data pool of 400 urban MMTs to develop and train a new model capable of estimating MMTs on the basis of physical and socio-economic city characteristics using multivariate non-linear multivariate regression. The MMT is successfully described as a function of the current climate, the topography and the socio-economic standard, independently of daily mortality data for cities around the world. The city-specific MMT estimates represents a measure of human heat adaptation among the urban population. In a final third analysis, the model to derive human heat adaptation was adjusted to be driven by projected climate and socio-economic variables for the future. This allowed for estimation of the MMT and its change for 3 820 cities worldwide for different combinations of climate trajectories and socio-economic pathways until 2100. The knowledge on the evolution of heat adaptation in the future is a novelty as mostly heat exposure and its future development had been researched. In this work, changes in heat adaptation and exposure were analysed jointly. A wide range of possible health-related outcomes up to 2100 was the result, of which two scenarios with the highest socio-economic developments but opposing strong warming levels were highlighted for comparison. Strong economic growth based upon fossil fuel exploitation is associated with a high gain in heat adaptation, but may not be able to compensate for the associated negative health effects due to increased heat exposure in 30\% to 40\% of the cities investigated caused by severe climate change. A slightly less strong, but sustainable growth brings moderate gains in heat adaptation but a lower heat exposure and exposure reductions in 80\% to 84\% of the cities in terms of frequency (number of days exceeding the MMT) and intensity (magnitude of the MMT exceedance) due to a milder global warming. Choosing a 2 ° C compatible development by 2100 would therefore lower the risk of heat-related mortality at the end of the century. In summary, this thesis makes diverse and multidisciplinary contributions to a deeper understanding of human adaptation to heat under the current and the future climate. It is one of the first studies to carry out a systematic and statistical analysis of urban characteristics which are useful as MMT drivers to establish a generalised model of human heat adaptation, applicable at the global level. A broad range of possible heat-related health options for various future scenarios was shown for the first time. This work is of relevance for the assessment of heat-health impacts in regions where mortality data are not accessible or missing. The results are useful for health care planning at the meso- and macro-level and to urban- and climate change adaptation planning. Lastly, beyond having met the posed objective, this thesis advances research towards a global future impact assessment of heat on human health by providing an alternative method of MMT estimation, that is spatially and temporally flexible in its application.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{SamprognaMohor2022, author = {Samprogna Mohor, Guilherme}, title = {Exploring the transferability of flood loss models across flood types}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-55714}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-557141}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {XXIV, 182}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The estimation of financial losses is an integral part of flood risk assessment. The application of existing flood loss models on locations or events different from the ones used to train the models has led to low performance, showing that characteristics of the flood damaging process have not been sufficiently well represented yet. To improve flood loss model transferability, I explore various model structures aiming at incorporating different (inland water) flood types and pathways. That is based on a large survey dataset of approximately 6000 flood-affected households which addresses several aspects of the flood event, not only the hazard characteristics but also information on the affected building, socioeconomic factors, the household's preparedness level, early warning, and impacts. Moreover, the dataset reports the coincidence of different flood pathways. Whilst flood types are a classification of flood events reflecting their generating process (e.g. fluvial, pluvial), flood pathways represent the route the water takes to reach the receptors (e.g. buildings). In this work, the following flood pathways are considered: levee breaches, river floods, surface water floods, and groundwater floods. The coincidence of several hazard processes at the same time and place characterises a compound event. In fact, many flood events develop through several pathways, such as the ones addressed in the survey dataset used. Earlier loss models, although developed with one or multiple predictor variables, commonly use loss data from a single flood event which is attributed to a single flood type, disregarding specific flood pathways or the coincidence of multiple pathways. This gap is addressed by this thesis through the following research questions: 1. In which aspects do flood pathways of the same (compound inland) flood event differ? 2. How much do factors which contribute to the overall flood loss in a building differ in various settings, specifically across different flood pathways? 3. How well can Bayesian loss models learn from different settings? 4. Do compound, that is, coinciding flood pathways result in higher losses than a single pathway, and what does the outcome imply for future loss modelling? Statistical analysis has found that households affected by different flood pathways also show, in general, differing characteristics of the affected building, preparedness, and early warning, besides the hazard characteristics. Forecasting and early warning capabilities and the preparedness of the population are dominated by the general flood type, but characteristics of the hazard at the object-level, the impacts, and the recovery are more related to specific flood pathways, indicating that risk communication and loss models could benefit from the inclusion of flood-pathway-specific information. For the development of the loss model, several potentially relevant predictors are analysed: water depth, duration, velocity, contamination, early warning lead time, perceived knowledge about self-protection, warning information, warning source, gap between warning and action, emergency measures, implementation of property-level precautionary measures (PLPMs), perceived efficacy of PLPMs, previous flood experience, awareness of flood risk, ownership, building type, number of flats, building quality, building value, house/flat area, building area, cellar, age, household size, number of children, number of elderly residents, income class, socioeconomic status, and insurance against floods. After a variable selection, descriptors of the hazard, building, and preparedness were deemed significant, namely: water depth, contamination, duration, velocity, building area, building quality, cellar, PLPMs, perceived efficacy of PLPMs, emergency measures, insurance, and previous flood experience. The inclusion of the indicators of preparedness is relevant, as they are rarely involved in loss datasets and in loss modelling, although previous studies have shown their potential in reducing losses. In addition, the linear model fit indicates that the explanatory factors are, in several cases, differently relevant across flood pathways. Next, Bayesian multilevel models were trained, which intrinsically incorporate uncertainties and allow for partial pooling (i.e. different groups of data, such as households affected by different flood pathways, can learn from each other), increasing the statistical power of the model. A new variable selection was performed for this new model approach, reducing the number of predictors from twelve to seven variables but keeping factors of the hazard, building, and preparedness, namely: water depth, contamination, duration, building area, PLPMs, insurance, and previous flood experience. The new model was trained not only across flood pathways but also across regions of Germany, divided according to general socioeconomic factors and insurance policies, and across flood events. The distinction across regions and flood events did not improve loss modelling and led to a large overlap of regression coefficients, with no clear trend or pattern. The distinction of flood pathways showed credibly distinct regression coefficients, leading to a better understanding of flood loss modelling and indicating one potential reason why model transferability has been challenging. Finally, new model structures were trained to include the possibility of compound inland floods (i.e. when multiple flood pathways coincide on the same affected asset). The dataset does not allow for verifying in which sequence the flood pathway waves occurred and predictor variables reflect only their mixed or combined outcome. Thus, two Bayesian models were trained: 1. a multi-membership model, a structure which learns the regression coefficients for multiple flood pathways at the same time, and 2. a multilevel model wherein the combination of coinciding flood pathways makes individual categories. The multi-membership model resulted in credibly different coefficients across flood pathways but did not improve model performance in comparison to the model assuming only a single dominant flood pathway. The model with combined categories signals an increase in impacts after compound floods, but due to the uncertainty in model coefficients and estimates, it is not possible to ascertain such an increase as credible. That is, with the current level of uncertainty in differentiating the flood pathways, the loss estimates are not credibly distinct from individual flood pathways. To overcome the challenges faced, non-linear or mixed models could be explored in the future. Interactions, moderation, and mediation effects, as well as non-linear effects, should also be further studied. Loss data collection should regularly include preparedness indicators, and either data collection or hydraulic modelling should focus on the distinction of coinciding flood pathways, which could inform loss models and further improve estimates. Flood pathways show distinct (financial) impacts, and their inclusion in loss modelling proves relevant, for it helps in clarifying the different contribution of influencing factors to the final loss, improving understanding of the damaging process, and indicating future lines of research.}, language = {en} } @techreport{HuberMiechielsenOttoetal.2022, author = {Huber, Bettina and Miechielsen, Milena and Otto, Antje and Schmidt, Katja and Ullrich, Susann and Deppermann, Lara-Helene and Eckersley, Peter and Haupt, Wolfgang and Heidenreich, Anna and Kern, Kristine and Lipp, Torsten and Neumann, Nina and Schneider, Philipp and Sterzel, Till and Thieken, Annegret}, title = {Instrumente und Maßnahmen der kommunalen Klimaanpassung}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-56345}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-563456}, pages = {XVII, 135}, year = {2022}, abstract = {St{\"a}dte sind aufgrund ihrer Agglomeration von Bev{\"o}lkerung, Sachwerten und Infrastrukturen in besonderem Maße von extremen Wetterereignissen wie Starkregen und Hitze betroffen. Zahlreiche {\"U}berflutungsereignisse infolge von Starkregen traten in den letzten Jahren in verschiedenen Regionen Deutschlands auf und f{\"u}hrten nicht nur zu Sch{\"a}den in zwei- bis dreistelliger Millionenh{\"o}he, sondern auch zu Todesopfern. Und auch Hitzewellen, wie sie in den vergangenen Jahren vermehrt aufgetreten sind, bergen gesundheitliche Risiken, welche sich auch in verschiedenen Sch{\"a}tzungen zu Hitzetodesf{\"a}llen wiederfinden. Um diesen Risiken zu begegnen und Sch{\"a}den infolge von Wetterextremen zu reduzieren, entwickeln viele Kommunen bereits Strategien und Konzepte im Kontext der Klimaanpassung und/oder setzen Anpassungsmaßnahmen um. Neben der Entwicklung und Umsetzung eigener Ideen orientieren sich St{\"a}dte dabei u. a. an Leitf{\"a}den und Beispielen aus der Literatur, Erfahrungen aus anderen St{\"a}dten oder an Ergebnissen aus Forschungsprojekten. Dieser Lern- und Transferprozess, der eine {\"U}bertragung von Maßnahmen oder Instrumenten der Klimaanpassung von einem Ort auf einen anderen beinhaltet, ist bislang noch unzureichend erforscht und verstanden. Der vorliegende Bericht untersucht deshalb ebendiesen Lern- und Transferprozess zwischen sowie innerhalb von St{\"a}dten sowie das Transferpotenzial konkreter Wissenstransfer-Medien, Instrumente und Maßnahmen. Damit wird das Ziel verfolgt, ein besseres Verst{\"a}ndnis dieser Prozesse zu entwickeln und einen Beitrag zur Verbesserung des Transfers von kommunalen Klimaanpassungsaktivit{\"a}ten zu leisten. Der vorliegende Inhalt baut dabei auf einer vorangegangenen Analyse des Forschungsstands zum Transfer von Policies durch Haupt et al. (2021) auf und versucht, den bereits generierten Wissensstand auf der Ebene von Policies nun um die Ebene konkreter Instrumente und Maßnahmen zu erg{\"a}nzen sowie durch empirische Befunde zu ausgew{\"a}hlten Maßnahmen zu untermauern. Die Wissens- und Datengrundlage dieses Berichts umfasst einen Mix aus verschiedenen (Online)-Befragungen und Interviews mit Vertreter:innen relevanter Akteursgruppen, vor allem Vertreter:innen von Stadtverwaltungen, sowie den Erfahrungswerten der drei ExTrass-Fallstudienst{\"a}dte Potsdam, Remscheid und W{\"u}rzburg. Nach einer Einleitung besch{\"a}ftigt sich Kapitel 2 mit {\"u}bergeordneten Faktoren der {\"U}bertragbarkeit bzw. des Transfers. Kapitel 2.1 bietet hierbei eine Zusammenfassung zum aktuellen Wissensstand hinsichtlich des Transfers von Policies im Bereich der st{\"a}dtischen Klimapolitik gem{\"a}ß Haupt et al. (2021). Hier werden zentrale Kriterien f{\"u}r einen erfolgreichen Transfer herausgearbeitet, um einen Ankn{\"u}pfungspunkt f{\"u}r die folgenden Inhalte und empirischen Befunde auf der Ebene konkreter Instrumente und Maßnahmen zu bieten. Kapitel 2.2 schließt hieran an und pr{\"a}sentiert Erkenntnisse aus einer weitreichenden Kommunalbefragung. Hierbei wurde untersucht ob und welche Klimaanpassungsmaßnahmen in den St{\"a}dten bereits umgesetzt werden, welche f{\"o}rdernden und hemmenden Aspekte es dabei gibt und welche Erfahrungen beim Transfer von Wissen und Ideen bereits vorliegen. Kapitel 3 untersucht die Rolle verschiedener Medien des Wissenstransfers und widmet sich dabei beispielhaft Leitf{\"a}den zur Klimaanpassung und Maßnahmensteckbriefen. Kapitel 3.1 beantwortet dabei Fragen nach der Relevanz und Zug{\"a}nglichkeit von Leitf{\"a}den, deren St{\"a}rken und Schw{\"a}chen, sowie konkreten Anforderungen vonseiten befragter Personen. Außerdem werden acht ausgew{\"a}hlte Leitf{\"a}den vorgestellt und komprimiert auf ihre Transferpotenziale hin eingesch{\"a}tzt. Kapitel 3.2 betrachtet Maßnahmensteckbriefe als Medien des Wissenstransfers und arbeitet zentrale Aspekte f{\"u}r einen praxisrelevanten inhaltlichen Aufbau heraus, um basierend darauf einen Muster-Maßnahmensteckbrief f{\"u}r Klimaanpassungsmaßnahmen zu entwickeln und vorzuschlagen. Kapitel 4 besch{\"a}ftigt sich mit sehr konkreten kommunalen Erfahrungen rund um den Transfer von sieben ausgew{\"a}hlten Instrumenten und Maßnahmen und bietet zahlreiche empirische Befunde aus den Kommunen, basierend auf der Kommunalbefragung, verschiedenen Interviews und den Erfahrungen aus der Projektarbeit. Die folgenden sieben Instrumente und Maßnahmen wurden ausgew{\"a}hlt, um eine große Breite st{\"a}dtischer Klimaanpassungsaktivit{\"a}ten zu betrachten: 1) Klimafunktionskarten (Stadtklimakarten), 2) Starkregengefahrenkarten, 3) Checklisten zur Klimaanpassung in der Bauleitplanung, 4) Verbot von Schotterg{\"a}rten in Bebauungspl{\"a}nen, 5) Fassadenbegr{\"u}nungen, 6) klimaangepasste Gestaltung von Gr{\"u}n- und Freifl{\"a}chen sowie 7) Handlungsempfehlungen f{\"u}r Betreuungseinrichtungen zum Umgang mit Hitze und Starkregen. F{\"u}r jede dieser Klimaanpassungsaktivit{\"a}ten wird auf Ebene der Kommunen Ziel, Verbreitung und Erscheinungsformen, Umsetzung anhand konkreter Beispiele, f{\"o}rdernde und hemmende Faktoren sowievorliegende Erfahrungen zu und Hinweisen auf Transfer dargestellt. Kapitel 5 schließt den vorliegenden Bericht ab, indem zentrale Transfer-Barrieren aus den gewonnenen Erkenntnissen aufgegriffen und entsprechende Empfehlungen an verschiedene Ebenen der Politik ausgesprochen werden. Diese Empfehlungen zur Verbesserung des Transfers von klimaanpassungsrelevanten Instrumenten, Strategien und Maßnahmen umfassen 1) die Verbesserung des Austauschs zwischen verschiedenen St{\"a}dten, 2) die Verbesserung der Zug{\"a}nglichkeit von Wissen und Erfahrungen, 3) die Schaffung von Vernetzungsstrukturen innerhalb von St{\"a}dten sowie 4) bestehende Wissensl{\"u}cken zu schließen. Die Autor:innen des vorliegenden Berichts hoffen, durch die vielf{\"a}ltigen Untersuchungsaspekte einen Beitrag zum besseren Verst{\"a}ndnis der Lern- und Transferprozesse und zur Verbesserung des Transfers kommunaler Klimaanpassungsaktivit{\"a}ten zu leisten.}, language = {de} } @article{SchoenfeldtWinocurPaneketal.2022, author = {Sch{\"o}nfeldt, Elisabeth and Winocur, Diego and P{\´a}nek, Tom{\´a}š and Korup, Oliver}, title = {Deep learning reveals one of Earth's largest landslide terrain in Patagonia}, series = {Earth \& planetary science letters}, volume = {593}, journal = {Earth \& planetary science letters}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam [u.a.]}, issn = {0012-821X}, doi = {10.1016/j.epsl.2022.117642}, pages = {13}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Hundreds of basaltic plateau margins east of the Patagonian Cordillera are undermined by numerous giant slope failures. However, the overall extent of this widespread type of plateau collapse remains unknown and incompletely captured in local maps. To detect giant slope failures consistently throughout the region, we train two convolutional neural networks (CNNs), AlexNet and U-Net, with Sentinel-2 optical data and TanDEM-X topographic data on elevation, surface roughness, and curvature. We validated the performance of these CNNs with independent testing data and found that AlexNet performed better when learned on topographic data, and UNet when learned on optical data. AlexNet predicts a total landslide area of 12,000 km2 in a study area of 450,000 km2, and thus one of Earth's largest clusters of giant landslides. These are mostly lateral spreads and rotational failures in effusive rocks, particularly eroding the margins of basaltic plateaus; some giant landslides occurred along shores of former glacial lakes, but are least prevalent in Quaternary sedimentary rocks. Given the roughly comparable topographic, climatic, and seismic conditions in our study area, we infer that basalts topping weak sedimentary rocks may have elevated potential for large-scale slope failure. Judging from the many newly detected and previously unknown landslides, we conclude that CNNs can be a valuable tool to detect large-scale slope instability at the regional scale. However, visual inspection is still necessary to validate results and correctly outline individual landslide source and deposit areas.}, language = {en} } @article{MuellerSchuelerZechetal.2022, author = {M{\"u}ller, Sebastian and Sch{\"u}ler, Lennart and Zech, Alraune and Heße, Falk}, title = {GSTools v1.3: a toolbox for geostatistical modelling in Python}, series = {Geoscientific model development : an interactive open access journal of the European Geosciences Union}, volume = {15}, journal = {Geoscientific model development : an interactive open access journal of the European Geosciences Union}, number = {7}, publisher = {Copernicus}, address = {G{\"o}ttingen}, issn = {1991-959X}, doi = {10.5194/gmd-15-3161-2022}, pages = {3161 -- 3182}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Geostatistics as a subfield of statistics accounts for the spatial correlations encountered in many applications of, for example, earth sciences. Valuable information can be extracted from these correlations, also helping to address the often encountered burden of data scarcity. Despite the value of additional data, the use of geostatistics still falls short of its potential. This problem is often connected to the lack of user-friendly software hampering the use and application of geostatistics. We therefore present GSTools, a Python-based software suite for solving a wide range of geostatistical problems. We chose Python due to its unique balance between usability, flexibility, and efficiency and due to its adoption in the scientific community. GSTools provides methods for generating random fields; it can perform kriging, variogram estimation and much more. We demonstrate its abilities by virtue of a series of example applications detailing their use.}, language = {en} } @article{BauerBoersigPhametal.2022, author = {Bauer, Jonas and B{\"o}rsig, Nicolas and Pham, Van Cam and Hoan, Tran Viet and Nguyen, Ha Thi and Norra, Stefan}, title = {Geochemistry and evolution of groundwater resources in the context of salinization and freshening in the southernmost Mekong Delta, Vietnam}, series = {Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies}, volume = {40}, journal = {Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {2214-5818}, doi = {10.1016/j.ejrh.2022.101010}, pages = {17}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Study region: Ca Mau Province (CMP), Mekong Delta (MD), Vietnam. Study focus: Groundwater from deep aquifers is the most reliable source of freshwater in the MD but extensive overexploitation in the last decades led to the drop of hydraulic heads and negative environmental impacts. Therefore, a comprehensive groundwater investigation was conducted to evaluate its composition in the context of Quaternary marine transgression and regression cycles, geochemical processes as well as groundwater extraction. New hydrological insights for the region: The abundance of groundwater of Na-HCO3 type and distinct ion ratios, such as Na+/Cl-, indicate extensive freshwater intrusion in an initially saline hydrogeological system, with decreasing intensity from upper Pleistocene to deeper Miocene aquifers, most likely during the last marine regression phase 60-12 ka BP. Deviations from the conservative mixing line between the two endmembers seawater and freshwater are attributed to ion-exchange processes on mineral surfaces, making ion ratios in combination with a customized water type analysis a useful tool to distinguish between salinization and freshening processes. Elevated salinity in some areas is attributed to HCO3- generation by organic matter decomposition in marine sediments rather than to seawater intrusion. Nevertheless, a few randomly distributed locations show strong evidence of recent salinization in an early stage, which may be caused by the downwards migration of saline Holocene groundwater through natural and anthropogenic pathways into deep aquifers.}, language = {en} } @article{LiPostlBoehmeretal.2022, author = {Li, Chenzhi and Postl, Alexander K. and B{\"o}hmer, Thomas and Cao, Xianyong and Dolman, Andrew M. and Herzschuh, Ulrike}, title = {Harmonized chronologies of a global late Quaternary pollen dataset (LegacyAge 1.0)}, series = {Earth system science data : ESSD}, volume = {14}, journal = {Earth system science data : ESSD}, number = {3}, publisher = {Copernics Publications}, address = {Katlenburg-Lindau}, issn = {1866-3508}, doi = {10.5194/essd-14-1331-2022}, pages = {1331 -- 1343}, year = {2022}, abstract = {We present a chronology framework named LegacyAge 1.0 containing harmonized chronologies for 2831 pollen records (downloaded from the Neotoma Paleoecology Database and the supplementary Asian datasets) together with their age control points and metadata in machine-readable data formats. All chronologies use the Bayesian framework implemented in Bacon version 2.5.3. Optimal parameter settings of priors (accumulation.shape, memory.strength, memory.mean, accumulation.rate, and thickness) were identified based on information in the original publication or iteratively after preliminary model inspection. The most common control points for the chronologies are radiocarbon dates (86.1 \%), calibrated by the latest calibration curves (IntCal20 and SHCal20 for the terrestrial radiocarbon dates in the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere and Marine20 for marine materials). The original publications were consulted when dealing with outliers and inconsistencies. Several major challenges when setting up the chronologies included the waterline issue (18.8\% of records), reservoir effect (4.9 \%), and sediment deposition discontinuity (4.4 \%). Finally, we numerically compare the LegacyAge 1.0 chronologies to those published in the original publications and show that the reliability of the chronologies of 95.4\% of records could be improved according to our assessment. Our chronology framework and revised chronologies provide the opportunity to make use of the ages and age uncertainties in synthesis studies of, for example, pollen-based vegetation and climate change. The LegacyAge 1.0 dataset, including metadata, datings, harmonized chronologies, and R code used, is openaccess and available at PANGAEA (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.933132; Li et al., 2021) and Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5815192; Li et al., 2022), respectively.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Heidenreich2022, author = {Heidenreich, Anna}, title = {Risk Communicaton of Natural Hazards}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {XII, 141}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Natural hazards pose a threat to human health and life. In Germany, where the research for this thesis was conducted, numerous weather extremes occurred in the recent past that caused high numbers of fatalities and huge financial losses. The focus of this research is centred around two relevant natural hazards: heat stress and flooding. Preventing negative health impacts and deaths, as well as structural and monetary damage is the purpose of risk management and this requires citizens to adapt as well. Risk communication is implemented to foster people's risk perception and motivate individual adaptation. However, methods of risk and crisis communication are often not evaluated in a structured manner. Much interdisciplinary research exists on both risk perception and adaptation, however, not much is known on the connection between the two. Furthermore, the existing research on risk communication is often not theory-driven and its impact on individual adaptation and risk perception is not thoroughly documented. This dissertation follows three research aims: (1) Compare psychological theories that contribute to natural hazard research. (2) Explore risk perception and adaptive behaviour by applying multiple methods. And (3) evaluate one risk communication method and one crisis communication method in a theory-driven manner to determine their impact on risk perception and adaptive behaviour. First, a literature review is provided on existing psychological theories which aim to explain the behaviour of individuals with regards to natural hazards. The three key theories included are the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT), the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM), and the Risk Information Seeking and Processing Model (RISP). Each of these are described and compared to each other with a focus on their explanatory power and practical significance in interdisciplinary research. Theoretical adaptations and possible extensions for future research are proposed for the presented approaches. Second, a multimethod field study on heat stress at an open-air event is presented. Face-to-face surveys (n = 306) and behavioural observations (n = 2750) were carried out at a horticultural show in W{\"u}rzburg in summer 2018. The visitors' risk perception, adaptive behaviour, and activity level were analysed and compared between hot days, summer days, and rainy days, applying correlation analyses, ANOVA, and multiple regression analyses. Heat risk perception was generally high, but most respondents were unaware of heat warnings on the day of their visit. During hot days the highest level of adaptation and lower activity levels were observed. Discrepancies between reported and observed adaptation emerged for different age groups.. Third, a telephone and web-based household survey on heat stress was conducted in the cities of W{\"u}rzburg, Potsdam, and Remscheid in 2019 (n = 1417). The PADM served as the study's theoretical framework. In multiple regression analyses the PADM factors of environmental and demographic context, risk communication, and psychological processes explained a substantial share of variance of protection motivation, protective response, and emotion-focused coping. Elements of crisis communication of a heat warning were evaluated experimentally. Results showed that understanding and adaptation intention was significantly higher in individuals that had received action recommendations alongside the heat warning. Fourth, the focus is set on a risk communication method of the flood context. A series of workshops on individual flood protection was carried out in six different settings. The participants (n = 115) answered a pretest-posttest questionnaire. Mixed-model analyses revealed significant increases in self-efficacy, subjective knowledge, and protection motivation. Stronger effects were observed in younger participants and those with lower levels of previous knowledge on flood adaptation as well as no flood experience. The findings of this thesis help to understand individual adaptation, as well as possible impacts of risk and crisis communication on risk perception and adaptation. The scientific background of this work is rooted in the disciplines of psychology and geosciences. The two theories PMT and PADM proved to be useful theoretical frameworks for the presented studies to suggest improvements in risk communication methods. A broad picture of individual adaptation is captured through a variety of methods of self-reports (face-to-face, telephone-based, web-based, and paper-pencil surveys) and behavioural observations, which recorded past and intended behaviour. Alongside with further methodological recommendations, the theory-driven evaluations of risk and crisis communication methods can serve as best-practice examples for future evaluation studies in natural hazard research but also other sciences dealing with risk behaviour to identify and improve effective risk communication pathways.}, language = {en} } @misc{WutzlerHudsonThieken2022, author = {Wutzler, Bianca and Hudson, Paul and Thieken, Annegret}, title = {Adaptation strategies of flood-damaged businesses in Germany}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {1304}, issn = {1866-8372}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-57735}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-577350}, pages = {13}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Flood risk management in Germany follows an integrative approach in which both private households and businesses can make an important contribution to reducing flood damage by implementing property-level adaptation measures. While the flood adaptation behavior of private households has already been widely researched, comparatively less attention has been paid to the adaptation strategies of businesses. However, their ability to cope with flood risk plays an important role in the social and economic development of a flood-prone region. Therefore, using quantitative survey data, this study aims to identify different strategies and adaptation drivers of 557 businesses damaged by a riverine flood in 2013 and 104 businesses damaged by pluvial or flash floods between 2014 and 2017. Our results indicate that a low perceived self-efficacy may be an important factor that can reduce the motivation of businesses to adapt to flood risk. Furthermore, property-owners tended to act more proactively than tenants. In addition, high experience with previous flood events and low perceived response costs could strengthen proactive adaptation behavior. These findings should be considered in business-tailored risk communication.}, language = {en} } @article{AtharePradhanSinghetal.2022, author = {Athare, Tushar Ramchandra and Pradhan, Prajal and Singh, S. R. K. and Kropp, J{\"u}rgen}, title = {India consists of multiple food systems with scoioeconomic and environmental variations}, series = {PLOS ONE / Public Library of Science}, volume = {17}, journal = {PLOS ONE / Public Library of Science}, number = {8}, publisher = {PLoS}, address = {San Fransisco}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0270342}, pages = {18}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Agriculture in India accounts for 18\% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and uses significant land and water. Various socioeconomic factors and food subsidies influence diets in India. Indian food systems face the challenge of sustainably nourishing the 1.3 billion population. However, existing studies focus on a few food system components, and holistic analysis is still missing. We identify Indian food systems covering six food system components: food consumption, production, processing, policy, environmental footprints, and socioeconomic factors from the latest Indian household consumer expenditure survey. We identify 10 Indian food systems using k-means cluster analysis on 15 food system indicators belonging to the six components. Based on the major source of calorie intake, we classify the ten food systems into production-based (3), subsidy-based (3), and market-based (4) food systems. Home-produced and subsidized food contribute up to 2000 kcal/consumer unit (CU)/day and 1651 kcal/CU/day, respectively, in these food systems. The calorie intake of 2158 to 3530 kcal/CU/day in the food systems reveals issues of malnutrition in India. Environmental footprints are commensurate with calorie intake in the food systems. Embodied GHG, land footprint, and water footprint estimates range from 1.30 to 2.19 kg CO(2)eq/CU/day, 3.89 to 6.04 m(2)/CU/day, and 2.02 to 3.16 m(3)/CU/day, respectively. Our study provides a holistic understanding of Indian food systems for targeted nutritional interventions on household malnutrition in India while also protecting planetary health.}, language = {en} } @article{ZhuCottonKawaseetal.2022, author = {Zhu, Chuanbin and Cotton, Fabrice and Kawase, Hiroshi and H{\"a}ndel, Annabel and Pilz, Marco and Nakano, Kenichi}, title = {How well can we predict earthquake site response so far?}, series = {Earthquake spectra : the professional journal of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute}, volume = {38}, journal = {Earthquake spectra : the professional journal of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute}, number = {2}, publisher = {Sage Publ.}, address = {Thousand Oaks}, issn = {8755-2930}, doi = {10.1177/87552930211060859}, pages = {1047 -- 1075}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Earthquake site responses or site effects are the modifications of surface geology to seismic waves. How well can we predict the site effects (average over many earthquakes) at individual sites so far? To address this question, we tested and compared the effectiveness of different estimation techniques in predicting the outcrop Fourier site responses separated using the general inversion technique (GIT) from recordings. Techniques being evaluated are (a) the empirical correction to the horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio of earthquakes (c-HVSR), (b) one-dimensional ground response analysis (GRA), and (c) the square-root-impedance (SRI) method (also called the quarter-wavelength approach). Our results show that c-HVSR can capture significantly more site-specific features in site responses than both GRA and SRI in the aggregate, especially at relatively high frequencies. c-HVSR achieves a "good match" in spectral shape at similar to 80\%-90\% of 145 testing sites, whereas GRA and SRI fail at most sites. GRA and SRI results have a high level of parametric and/or modeling errors which can be constrained, to some extent, by collecting on-site recordings.}, language = {en} } @techreport{ThiekenOttoHauptetal.2022, author = {Thieken, Annegret and Otto, Antje and Haupt, Wolfgang and Eckersley, Peter and Kern, Kristine and Ullrich, Susann and Hautz, Timo and Rocker, Philipp and Schulz, Rabea and Sausen, Hannah and Dillenardt, Lisa and Rose, Claudia and Schmidt, Katja and Huber, Bettina and Sterzel, Till and Marken, Marieke and Miechielsen, Milena}, title = {Urbane Resilienz gegen{\"u}ber extremen Wetterereignissen}, editor = {Otto, Antje and Thieken, Annegret}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-55542}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-555427}, pages = {IX, 99}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Aufgrund der hohen Konzentration von Bev{\"o}lkerung, {\"o}konomischen Werten und Infrastrukturen k{\"o}nnen St{\"a}dte stark von extremen Wetterereignissen getroffen werden. Insbesondere Hitzewellen und {\"U}berflutungen in Folge von Starkregen verursachen in St{\"a}dten immense gesundheitliche und finanzielle Sch{\"a}den. Um Sch{\"a}den zu verringern oder gar zu vermeiden, ist es notwendig, entsprechende Vorsorge- und Klimaanpassungsmaßnahmen zu implementieren. Im Projekt „Urbane Resilienz gegen{\"u}ber extremen Wetterereignissen - Typologien und Transfer von Anpassungsstrategien in kleinen Großst{\"a}dten und Mittelst{\"a}dten" (ExTrass) lag der Fokus auf den beiden extremen Wetterereignissen Hitze und Starkregen sowie auf kleineren Großst{\"a}dten (100.000 bis 500.000 Einwohner:innen) und kreisfreien Mittelst{\"a}dten mit mehr als 50.000 Einwohner:innen. Im Projekt wurde die St{\"a}rkung der Klimaresilienz als Verbesserung der F{\"a}higkeiten von St{\"a}dten, aus vergangenen Ereignissen zu lernen sowie sich an antizipierte Gefahren anzupassen, verstanden. Klimaanpassung wurde demnach als ein Prozess aufgefasst, der durch die Umsetzung von potenziell schadensreduzierenden Maßnahmen beschreib- und operationalisierbar wird. Das Projekt hatte zwei Ziele: Erstens sollte die Klimaresilienz in den drei Fallstudienst{\"a}dten Potsdam, Remscheid und W{\"u}rzburg messbar gest{\"a}rkt werden. Zweitens sollten Transferpotenziale zwischen Groß- und Mittelst{\"a}dten in Deutschland identifiziert und besser nutzbar gemacht werden, damit die Wirkung von Pilotvorhaben {\"u}ber die direkt involvierten St{\"a}dte hinausgehen kann. Im Projekt standen folgende vier Leitfragen im Fokus: • Wie verbreitet sind Klimaanpassungsaktivit{\"a}ten in Großst{\"a}dten und gr{\"o}ßeren kreisfreien Mittelst{\"a}dten in Deutschland? • Welche hemmenden und beg{\"u}nstigenden Faktoren beeinflussen die Klimaanpassung? • Welche Maßnahmen der Klimaanpassung werden tats{\"a}chlich umgesetzt, und wie kann die Umsetzung verbessert werden? Was behindert? • Inwiefern lassen sich Beispiele guter Praxis auf andere St{\"a}dte {\"u}bertragen, adaptieren oder weiterentwickeln? Die Hauptergebnisse zu diesen Fragestellungen sind im vorliegenden Bericht zusammengefasst.}, language = {de} } @article{SpoonerScheckWenderothCacaceetal.2022, author = {Spooner, Cameron and Scheck-Wenderoth, Magdalena and Cacace, Mauro and Anikiev, Denis}, title = {How Alpine seismicity relates to lithospheric strength}, series = {International journal of earth sciences}, volume = {111}, journal = {International journal of earth sciences}, number = {4}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Berlin ; Heidelberg}, issn = {1437-3254}, doi = {10.1007/s00531-022-02174-5}, pages = {1201 -- 1221}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Despite the amount of research focussed on the Alpine orogen, different hypotheses still exist regarding varying spatial seismicity distribution patterns throughout the region. Previous measurement-constrained regional 3D models of lithospheric density distribution and thermal field facilitate the generation of a data-based rheological model of the region. In this study, we compute the long-term lithospheric strength and compare its spatial variation to observed seismicity patterns. We demonstrate how strength maxima within the crust (similar to 1 GPa) and upper mantle (> 2 GPa) occur at temperatures characteristic of the onset of crystal plasticity in those rocks (crust: 200-400 degrees C; mantle: similar to 600 degrees C), with almost all seismicity occurring in these regions. Correlation in the northern and southern forelands between crustal and lithospheric strengths and seismicity show different patterns of event distribution, reflecting their different tectonic settings. Seismicity in the plate boundary setting of the southern foreland corresponds to the integrated lithospheric strength, occurring mainly in the weaker domains surrounding the strong Adriatic plate. In the intraplate setting of the northern foreland, seismicity correlates to modelled crustal strength, and it mainly occurs in the weaker and warmer crust beneath the Upper Rhine Graben. We, therefore, suggest that seismicity in the upper crust is linked to weak crustal domains, which are more prone to localise deformation promoting failure and, depending on the local properties of the fault, earthquakes at relatively lower levels of accumulated stress than their neighbouring stronger counterparts. Upper mantle seismicity at depths greater than modelled brittle conditions, can be either explained by embrittlement of the mantle due to grain-size sensitive deformation within domains of active or recent slab cooling, or by dissipative weakening mechanisms, such as thermal runaway from shear heating and/or dehydration reactions within an overly ductile mantle. Results generated in this study are available for open access use to further discussions on the region.}, language = {en} } @article{Buerger2021, author = {B{\"u}rger, Gerd}, title = {Intraseasonal oscillation indices from complex EOFs}, series = {Journal of climate}, volume = {34}, journal = {Journal of climate}, number = {1}, publisher = {American Meteorological Soc.}, address = {Boston}, issn = {0894-8755}, doi = {10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0427.1}, pages = {107 -- 122}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Indices of oscillatory behavior are conveniently obtained by projecting the fields in question into a phase space of a few (mostly just two) dimensions; empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs) or other, more dynamical, modes are typically used for the projection. If sufficiently coherent and in quadrature, the projected variables simply describe a rotating vector in the phase space, which then serves as the basis for predictions. Using the boreal summer intraseasonal oscillation (BSISO) as a test case, an alternative procedure is introduced: it augments the original fields with their Hilbert transform (HT) to form a complex series and projects it onto its (single) dominant EOF. The real and imaginary parts of the corresponding complex pattern and index are compared with those of the original (real) EOF. The new index explains slightly less variance of the physical fields than the original, but it is much more coherent, partly from its use of future information by the HT. Because the latter is in the way of real-time monitoring, the index can only be used in cases with predicted physical fields, for which it promises to be superior. By developing a causal approximation of the HT, a real-time variant of the index is obtained whose coherency is comparable to the noncausal version, but with smaller explained variance of the physical fields. In test cases the new index compares well to other indices of BSISO. The potential for using both indices as an alternative is discussed.}, language = {en} } @article{AyzelHeistermann2021, author = {Ayzel, Georgy and Heistermann, Maik}, title = {The effect of calibration data length on the performance of a conceptual hydrological model versus LSTM and GRU}, series = {Computers \& geosciences : an international journal devoted to the publication of papers on all aspects of geocomputation and to the distribution of computer programs and test data sets ; an official journal of the International Association for Mathematical Geology}, volume = {149}, journal = {Computers \& geosciences : an international journal devoted to the publication of papers on all aspects of geocomputation and to the distribution of computer programs and test data sets ; an official journal of the International Association for Mathematical Geology}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0098-3004}, doi = {10.1016/j.cageo.2021.104708}, pages = {12}, year = {2021}, abstract = {We systematically explore the effect of calibration data length on the performance of a conceptual hydrological model, GR4H, in comparison to two Artificial Neural Network (ANN) architectures: Long Short-Term Memory Networks (LSTM) and Gated Recurrent Units (GRU), which have just recently been introduced to the field of hydrology. We implemented a case study for six river basins across the contiguous United States, with 25 years of meteorological and discharge data. Nine years were reserved for independent validation; two years were used as a warm-up period, one year for each of the calibration and validation periods, respectively; from the remaining 14 years, we sampled increasing amounts of data for model calibration, and found pronounced differences in model performance. While GR4H required less data to converge, LSTM and GRU caught up at a remarkable rate, considering their number of parameters. Also, LSTM and GRU exhibited the higher calibration instability in comparison to GR4H. These findings confirm the potential of modern deep-learning architectures in rainfall runoff modelling, but also highlight the noticeable differences between them in regard to the effect of calibration data length.}, language = {en} } @article{WegerCoenenLeitaoLawrence2021, author = {Weger Coenen, Lindsey and Leit{\~a}o, Joana and Lawrence, Mark G.}, title = {Expected impacts on greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions due to a possible transition towards a hydrogen economy in German road transport}, series = {International journal of hydrogen energy : official journal of the International Association for Hydrogen Energy}, volume = {46}, journal = {International journal of hydrogen energy : official journal of the International Association for Hydrogen Energy}, number = {7}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0360-3199}, doi = {10.1016/j.ijhydene.2020.11.014}, pages = {5875 -- 5890}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Transitioning German road transport partially to hydrogen energy is among the possibilities being discussed to help meet national climate targets. This study investigates impacts of a hypothetical, complete transition from conventionally-fueled to hydrogen-powered German transport through representative scenarios. Our results show that German emissions change between -179 and +95 MtCO(2)eq annually, depending on the scenario, with renewable-powered electrolysis leading to the greatest emissions reduction, while electrolysis using the fossilintense current electricity mix leads to the greatest increase. German energy emissions of regulated pollutants decrease significantly, indicating the potential for simultaneous air quality improvements. Vehicular hydrogen demand is 1000 PJ annually, requiring 446-525 TWh for electrolysis, hydrogen transport and storage, which could be supplied by future German renewable generation, supporting the potential for CO2-free hydrogen traffic and increased energy security. Thus hydrogen-powered transport could contribute significantly to climate and air quality goals, warranting further research and political discussion about this possibility.}, language = {en} } @article{LangeBuerkner2021, author = {Lange, Bastian and B{\"u}rkner, Hans-Joachim}, title = {Geographien experimenteller Arbeitsformen}, series = {Mitteilungen der {\"O}sterreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft}, volume = {162}, journal = {Mitteilungen der {\"O}sterreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft}, publisher = {{\"O}sterreichische Geographische Gesellschaft}, address = {Wien}, isbn = {978-3-901313-34-9}, issn = {0029-9138}, doi = {10.1553/moegg162s287}, pages = {287 -- 312}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Die Diskussion um Postwachstumsprozesse hat die kleinen, fr{\"u}her unbeachtet gebliebenen Orte der Innovation entdeckt. Ungeplant und unkoordiniert entstandene Produktions- und Arbeitsformen wie zum Beispiel Fab Labs, Offene Werkst{\"a}tten, Reallabore, Techshops, Repair Caf{\´e}s und andere entziehen sich weitgehend den gewohnten Erkl{\"a}rungs- und Beschreibungskategorien der sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschung. Die Komplexit{\"a}t ihrer Erscheinungsformen, ihre heterogene Verursachung, ihre kontingente Weiterentwicklung und ihre hybriden Arbeitsprozesse erfordern ergebnisoffene analytische Rekonstruktionen. Das Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, auf der Basis praxisnaher T{\"a}tigkeitsbeschreibungen jeweils Prozesse der Raumkontextualisierung und -zuschreibung zu rekonstruieren. Dies geschieht auf der Basis der leitenden Frage, inwieweit neue Arbeitsformen mit spezifischen Raumbez{\"u}gen einhergehen und eine differenzierte Sicht auf unterschiedliche Prozesse der Ortsbildung erforderlich machen. Als analytischer Referenzfall werden Offene Werkst{\"a}tten und die in ihnen vorherrschenden Arbeitsformen genauer betrachtet.}, language = {de} } @article{BronstertBuergerPfister2021, author = {Bronstert, Axel and B{\"u}rger, Gerhard and Pfister, Angela}, title = {Vorhersage und Projektion von Sturzfluten - Vorwort}, series = {Hydrologie und Wasserbewirtschaftung : HyWa = Hydrology and water resources management, Germany / Hrsg.: Fachverwaltungen des Bundes und der L{\"a}nder}, volume = {65}, journal = {Hydrologie und Wasserbewirtschaftung : HyWa = Hydrology and water resources management, Germany / Hrsg.: Fachverwaltungen des Bundes und der L{\"a}nder}, number = {6}, publisher = {Bundesanst. f{\"u}r Gew{\"a}sserkunde, BfG}, address = {Koblenz}, issn = {1439-1783}, pages = {260 -- 261}, year = {2021}, language = {de} } @article{VogelPatonAich2021, author = {Vogel, Johannes and Paton, Eva Nora and Aich, Valentin}, title = {Seasonal ecosystem vulnerability to climatic anomalies in the Mediterranean}, series = {Biogeosciences}, volume = {18}, journal = {Biogeosciences}, edition = {22}, publisher = {Copernicus}, address = {G{\"o}ttingen}, issn = {1726-4189}, doi = {10.5194/bg-18-5903-2021}, pages = {5903 -- 5927}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Mediterranean ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to climate change and the associated increase in climate anomalies. This study investigates extreme ecosystem responses evoked by climatic drivers in the Mediterranean Basin for the time span 1999-2019 with a specific focus on seasonal variations as the seasonal timing of climatic anomalies is considered essential for impact and vulnerability assessment. A bivariate vulnerability analysis is performed for each month of the year to quantify which combinations of the drivers temperature (obtained from ERA5-Land) and soil moisture (obtained from ESA CCI and ERA5-Land) lead to extreme reductions in ecosystem productivity using the fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR; obtained from the Copernicus Global Land Service) as a proxy. The bivariate analysis clearly showed that, in many cases, it is not just one but a combination of both drivers that causes ecosystem vulnerability. The overall pattern shows that Mediterranean ecosystems are prone to three soil moisture regimes during the yearly cycle: they are vulnerable to hot and dry conditions from May to July, to cold and dry conditions from August to October, and to cold conditions from November to April, illustrating the shift from a soil-moisture-limited regime in summer to an energy-limited regime in winter. In late spring, a month with significant vulnerability to hot conditions only often precedes the next stage of vulnerability to both hot and dry conditions, suggesting that high temperatures lead to critically low soil moisture levels with a certain time lag. In the eastern Mediterranean, the period of vulnerability to hot and dry conditions within the year is much longer than in the western Mediterranean. Our results show that it is crucial to account for both spatial and temporal variability to adequately assess ecosystem vulnerability. The seasonal vulnerability approach presented in this study helps to provide detailed insights regarding the specific phenological stage of the year in which ecosystem vulnerability to a certain climatic condition occurs. How to cite. Vogel, J., Paton, E., and Aich, V.: Seasonal ecosystem vulnerability to climatic anomalies in the Mediterranean, Biogeosciences, 18, 5903-5927, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-5903-2021, 2021.}, language = {en} } @article{VogelRivoireDeiddaetal.2021, author = {Vogel, Johannes and Rivoire, Pauline and Deidda, Cristina and Rahimi, Leila and Sauter, Christoph A. and Tschumi, Elisabeth and van der Wiel, Karin and Zhang, Tianyi and Zscheischler, Jakob}, title = {Identifying meteorological drivers of extreme impacts}, series = {Earth System Dynamics}, volume = {12}, journal = {Earth System Dynamics}, issn = {2190-4987}, doi = {10.5194/esd-12-151-2021}, pages = {151 -- 172}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Compound weather events may lead to extreme impacts that can affect many aspects of society including agriculture. Identifying the underlying mechanisms that cause extreme impacts, such as crop failure, is of crucial importance to improve their understanding and forecasting. In this study, we investigate whether key meteorological drivers of extreme impacts can be identified using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) in a model environment, a method that allows for automated variable selection and is able to handle collinearity between variables. As an example of an extreme impact, we investigate crop failure using annual wheat yield as simulated by the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM) crop model driven by 1600 years of daily weather data from a global climate model (EC-Earth) under present-day conditions for the Northern Hemisphere. We then apply LASSO logistic regression to determine which weather conditions during the growing season lead to crop failure. We obtain good model performance in central Europe and the eastern half of the United States, while crop failure years in regions in Asia and the western half of the United States are less accurately predicted. Model performance correlates strongly with annual mean and variability of crop yields; that is, model performance is highest in regions with relatively large annual crop yield mean and variability. Overall, for nearly all grid points, the inclusion of temperature, precipitation and vapour pressure deficit is key to predict crop failure. In addition, meteorological predictors during all seasons are required for a good prediction. These results illustrate the omnipresence of compounding effects of both meteorological drivers and different periods of the growing season for creating crop failure events. Especially vapour pressure deficit and climate extreme indicators such as diurnal temperature range and the number of frost days are selected by the statistical model as relevant predictors for crop failure at most grid points, underlining their overarching relevance. We conclude that the LASSO regression model is a useful tool to automatically detect compound drivers of extreme impacts and could be applied to other weather impacts such as wildfires or floods. As the detected relationships are of purely correlative nature, more detailed analyses are required to establish the causal structure between drivers and impacts.}, language = {en} } @article{SkalevagVormoor2021, author = {Sk{\aa}lev{\aa}g, Amalie and Vormoor, Klaus Josef}, title = {Daily streamflow trends in Western versus Eastern Norway and their attribution to hydro-meteorological drivers}, series = {Hydrological processes : an international journal}, volume = {35}, journal = {Hydrological processes : an international journal}, number = {8}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {New York}, issn = {0885-6087}, doi = {10.1002/hyp.14329}, pages = {17}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Regional warming and modifications in precipitation regimes has large impacts on streamflow in Norway, where both rainfall and snowmelt are important runoff generating processes. Hydrological impacts of recent changes in climate are usually investigated by trend analyses applied on annual, seasonal, or monthly time series. None of these detect sub-seasonal changes and their underlying causes. This study investigated sub-seasonal changes in streamflow, rainfall, and snowmelt in 61 and 51 catchments respectively in Western (Vestlandet) and Eastern (ostlandet) Norway by applying the Mann-Kendall test and Theil-Sen estimator on 10-day moving averaged daily time series over a 30-year period (1983-2012). The relative contribution of rainfall versus snowmelt to daily streamflow and the changes therein have also been estimated to identify the changing relevance of these driving processes over the same period. Detected changes in 10-day moving averaged daily streamflow were finally attributed to changes in the most important hydro-meteorological drivers using multiple-regression models with increasing complexity. Earlier spring flow timing in both regions occur due to earlier snowmelt. ostlandet shows increased summer streamflow in catchments up to 1100 m a.s.l. and slightly increased winter streamflow in about 50\% of the catchments. Trend patterns in Vestlandet are less coherent. The importance of rainfall has increased in both regions. Attribution of trends reveals that changes in rainfall and snowmelt can explain some streamflow changes where they are dominant processes (e.g., spring snowmelt in ostlandet and autumn rainfall in Vestlandet). Overall, the detected streamflow changes can be best explained by adding temperature trends as an additional predictor, indicating the relevance of additional driving processes such as increased glacier melt and evapotranspiration.}, language = {en} }