@phdthesis{Graeff2011,
  author    = {Gr{\"a}ff, Thomas},
  title     = {Soil moisture dynamics and soil moisture controlled runoff processes at different spatial scales : from observation to modelling},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-54470},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {Soil moisture is a key state variable that controls runoff formation, infiltration and partitioning of radiation into latent and sensible heat. However, the experimental characterisation of near surface soil moisture patterns and their controls on runoff formation remains a challenge. This subject was one aspect of the BMBF-funded OPAQUE project (operational discharge and flooding predictions in head catchments). As part of that project the focus of this dissertation is on: (1) testing the methodology and feasibility of the Spatial TDR technology in producing soil moisture profiles along TDR probes, including an inversion technique of the recorded signal in heterogeneous field soils, (2) the analysis of spatial variability and temporal dynamics of soil moisture at the field scale including field experiments and hydrological modelling, (3) the application of models of different complexity for understanding soil moisture dynamics and its importance for runoff generation as well as for improving the prediction of runoff volumes. To fulfil objective 1, several laboratory experiments were conducted to understand the influence of probe rod geometry and heterogeneities in the sampling volume under different wetness conditions. This includes a detailed analysis on how these error sources affect retrieval of soil moisture profiles in soils. Concerning objective 2 a sampling strategy of two TDR clusters installed in the head water of the Wilde Weißeritz catchment (Eastern Ore Mountains, Germany) was used to investigate how well "the catchment state" can be characterised by means of distributed soil moisture data observed at the field scale. A grassland site and a forested site both located on gentle slopes were instrumented with two Spatial TDR clusters that consist of up to 39 TDR probes. Process understanding was gained by modelling the interaction of evapotranspiration and soil moisture with the hydrological process model CATFLOW. A field scale irrigation experiment was carried out to investigate near subsurface processes at the hillslope scale. The interactions of soil moisture and runoff formation were analysed using discharge data from three nested catchments: the Becherbach with a size of 2 km², the Rehefeld catchment (17 km²) and the superordinate Ammelsdorf catchment (49 km²). Statistical analyses including observations of pre-event runoff, soil moisture and different rainfall characteristics were employed to predict stream flow volume. On the different scales a strong correlation between the average soil moisture and the runoff coefficients of rainfall-runoff events could be found, which almost explains equivalent variability as the pre-event runoff. Furthermore, there was a strong correlation between surface soil moisture and subsurface wetness with a hysteretic behaviour between runoff soil moisture. To fulfil objective 3 these findings were used in a generalised linear model (GLM) analysis which combines state variables describing the catchments antecedent wetness and variables describing the meteorological forcing in order to predict event runoff coefficients. GLM results were compared to simulations with the catchment model WaSiM ETH. Hereby were the model results of the GLMs always better than the simulations with WaSiM ETH. The GLM analysis indicated that the proposed sampling strategy of clustering TDR probes in typical functional units is a promising technique to explore soil moisture controls on runoff generation and can be an important link between the scales. Long term monitoring of such sites could yield valuable information for flood warning and forecasting by identifying critical soil moisture conditions for the former and providing a better representation of the initial moisture conditions for the latter.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{BreuerBormannBronstertetal.2009,
  author    = {Breuer, Lutz and Bormann, Helge and Bronstert, Axel and Croke, Barry F. W. and Frede, Hans-Georg and Gr{\"a}ff, Thomas and Hubrechts, Lode and Kite, Geoffrey and Lanini, Jordan and Leavesley, George and Lettenmaier, Dennis P. and Lindstroem, Goeran and Seibert, Jan and Sivapalan, Mayuran and Viney, Neil R. and Willems, Patrick},
  title     = {Assessing the impact of land use change on hydrology by ensemble modeling (LUCHEM) III : scenario analysis},
  issn      = {0309-1708},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.advwatres.2008.06.009},
  year      = {2009},
  abstract  = {An ensemble of 10 hydrological models was applied to the same set of land use change scenarios. There was general agreement about the direction of changes in the mean annual discharge and 90\% discharge percentile predicted by the ensemble members, although a considerable range in the magnitude of predictions for the scenarios and catchments under consideration was obvious. Differences in the magnitude of the increase were attributed to the different mean annual actual evapotranspiration rates for each land use type. The ensemble of model runs was further analyzed with deterministic and probabilistic ensemble methods. The deterministic ensemble method based on a trimmed mean resulted in a single somewhat more reliable scenario prediction. The probabilistic reliability ensemble averaging (REA) method allowed a quantification of the model structure uncertainty in the scenario predictions. It was concluded that the use of a model ensemble has greatly increased our confidence in the reliability of the model predictions.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{ZeheGraeffMorgneretal.2010,
  author    = {Zehe, Erwin and Gr{\"a}ff, Thomas and Morgner, Markus and Bauer, Andreas and Bronstert, Axel},
  title     = {Plot and field scale soil moisture dynamics and subsurface wetness control on runoff generation in a headwater in the Ore Mountains},
  issn      = {1027-5606},
  doi       = {10.5194/hess-14-873-2010},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {This study presents an application of an innovative sampling strategy to assess soil moisture dynamics in a headwater of the Weisseritz in the German eastern Ore Mountains. A grassland site and a forested site were instrumented with two Spatial TDR clusters (STDR) that consist of 39 and 32 coated TDR probes of 60 cm length. Distributed time series of vertically averaged soil moisture data from both sites/ensembles were analyzed by statistical and geostatistical methods. Spatial variability and the spatial mean at the forested site were larger than at the grassland site. Furthermore, clustering of TDR probes in combination with long-term monitoring allowed identification of average spatial covariance structures at the small field scale for different wetness states. The correlation length of soil water content as well as the sill to nugget ratio at the grassland site increased with increasing average wetness and but, in contrast, were constant at the forested site. As soil properties at both the forested and grassland sites are extremely variable, this suggests that the correlation structure at the forested site is dominated by the pattern of throughfall and interception. We also found a very strong correlation between antecedent soil moisture at the forested site and runoff coefficients of rainfall-runoff events observed at gauge Rehefeld. Antecedent soil moisture at the forest site explains 92\% of the variability in the runoff coefficients. By combining these results with a recession analysis we derived a first conceptual model of the dominant runoff mechanisms operating in this catchment. Finally, we employed a physically based hydrological model to shed light on the controls of soil- and plant morphological parameters on soil average soil moisture at the forested site and the grassland site, respectively. A homogeneous soil setup allowed, after fine tuning of plant morphological parameters, most of the time unbiased predictions of the observed average soil conditions observed at both field sites. We conclude that the proposed sampling strategy of clustering TDR probes is suitable to assess unbiased average soil moisture dynamics in critical functional units, in this case the forested site, which is a much better predictor for event scale runoff formation than pre-event discharge. Long term monitoring of such critical landscape elements could maybe yield valuable information for flood warning in headwaters. We thus think that STDR provides a good intersect of the advantages of permanent sampling and spatially highly resolved soil moisture sampling using mobile rods.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{ZeheGraeffMorgneretal.2008,
  author    = {Zehe, Erwin and Gr{\"a}ff, Thomas and Morgner, Markus and Bauer, Andreas and Bronstert, Axel},
  title     = {Plot and field scale soil moisture dynamics and subsurface wetness control on runoff generation in a headwater in the Ore Mountains},
  year      = {2008},
  abstract  = {This study presents an application of an innovative sampling strategy to assess soil moisture dynamics in a headwater of the Weißeritz in the German eastern Ore Mountains. A grassland site and a forested site were instrumented with two Spatial TDR clusters (STDR) that consist of 39 and 32 coated TDR probes of 60 cm length. Distributed time series of vertically averaged soil moisture data from both sites/ensembles were analyzed by statistical and geostatistical methods. Spatial variability and the spatial mean at the forested site were larger than at the grassland site. Furthermore, clustering of TDR probes in combination with long-term monitoring allowed identification of average spatial covariance structures at the small field scale for different wetness states. The correlation length of soil water content as well as the sill to nugget ratio at the grassland site increased with increasing average wetness and but, in contrast, were constant at the forested site. As soil properties at both the forested and grassland sites are extremely variable, this suggests that the correlation structure at the forested site is dominated by the pattern of throughfall and interception. We also found a strong correlation between average soil moisture dynamics and runoff coefficients of rainfall-runoff events observed at gauge Rehefeld, which explains almost as much variability in the runoff coefficients as pre-event discharge. By combining these results with a recession analysis we derived a first conceptual model of the dominant runoff mechanisms operating in this catchment. Finally, long term simulations with a physically based hydrological model were in good/acceptable accordance with the time series of spatial average soil water content observed at the forested site and the grassland site, respectively. Both simulations used a homogeneous soil setup that closely reproduces observed average soil conditions observed at the field sites. This corroborates the proposed sampling strategy of clustering TDR probes in typical functional units is a promising technique to explore the soil moisture control on runoff generation. Long term monitoring of such sites could maybe yield valuable information for flood warning. The sampling strategy helps furthermore to unravel different types of soil moisture variability.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{BormannBreuerGraffetal.2009,
  author    = {Bormann, Helge and Breuer, Lutz and Graff, Thomas and Croke, Barry},
  title     = {Assessing the impact of land use change on hydrology by ensemble modelling (LUCHEM) IV : model sensitivity to data aggregation and spatial (re-)distribution},
  issn      = {0309-1708},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.advwatres.2008.01.002},
  year      = {2009},
  abstract  = {This paper analyses the effect of spatial resolution and distribution of model input data on the results of regional-scale land use scenarios using three different hydrological catchment models. A 25 m resolution data set of a mesoscale catchment and three land use scenarios are used. Data are systematically aggregated to resolutions up to 2 kill. Land use scenarios are spatially redistributed, both randomly and topography based. Using these data, water fluxes are calculated on a daily time step for a 16 year time period without further calibration. Simulation results are used to identify grid size, distribution and model dependent scenario effects. In the case of data aggregation, all applied models react sensitively to grid size. WASIM and TOPLATS simulate constant water balances for grid sizes from 50 m to 300-500 m, SWAT is more sensitive to input data aggregation, simulating constant water balances between 50 m and 200 m grid size. The calculation of scenario effects is less robust to data aggregation. The maximum acceptable grid size reduces to 200-300 m for TOPLATS and WASIM. In case of spatial distribution, SWAT and TOPLATS are slightly sensitive to a redistribution of land use (below 1.5\% for water balance terms), whereas WASIM shows almost no reaction. Because the aggregation effects were stronger than the redistribution effects, it is concluded that spatial discretisation is more important than spatial distribution. As the aggregation effect was mainly associated with a change in land use fraction, it is concluded that accuracy of data sets is much more important than a high spatial resolution.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{GraeffZeheSchlaegeretal.2010,
  author    = {Gr{\"a}ff, Thomas and Zehe, Erwin and Schl{\"a}ger, Stefan and Morgner, Markus and Bauer, Andreas and Becker, Rolf and Creutzfeldt, Benjamin and Bronstert, Axel},
  title     = {A quality assessment of spatial TDR soil moisture measurements in homogenous and heterogeneous media with laboratory experiments},
  issn      = {1812-2108},
  doi       = {10.5194/hessd-7-269-2010},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {Investigation of transient soil moisture profiles yields valuable information of near- surface processes. A recently developed reconstruction algorithm based on the telegraph equation allows the inverse estimation of soil moisture profiles along coated, three rod TDR probes. Laboratory experiments were carried out to prove the results of the inversion and to understand the influence of probe rod deformation and solid objects close to the probe in heterogonous media. Differences in rod geometry can lead to serious misinterpretations in the soil moisture profile but have small influence on the average soil moisture along the probe. Solids in the integration volume have almost no effect on average soil moisture but result in locally slightly decreased moisture values. Inverted profiles obtained in a loamy soil with a clay content of about 16\% were in good agreement with independent measurements.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{GraeffZeheSchlaegeretal.2010,
  author    = {Gr{\"a}ff, Thomas and Zehe, Erwin and Schlaeger, Stefan and Morgner, Markus and Bauer, Andreas and Becker, Rolf and Creutzfeldt, Benjamin and Bronstert, Axel},
  title     = {A quality assessment of Spatial TDR soil moisture measurements in homogenous and heterogeneous media with laboratory experiments},
  issn      = {1027-5606},
  doi       = {10.5194/hess-14-1007-2010},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {Investigation of transient soil moisture profiles yields valuable information of near- surface processes. A recently developed reconstruction algorithm based on the telegraph equation allows the inverse estimation of soil moisture profiles along coated, three rod TDR probes. Laboratory experiments were carried out to prove the results of the inversion and to understand the influence of probe rod deformation and solid objects close to the probe in heterogeneous media. Differences in rod geometry can lead to serious misinterpretations in the soil moisture profile, but have small influence on the average soil moisture along the probe. Solids in the integration volume have almost no effect on average soil moisture, but result in locally slightly decreased moisture values. Inverted profiles obtained in a loamy soil with a clay content of about 16\% were in good agreement with independent measurements.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{BronstertCreutzfeldtGraeffetal.2012,
  author    = {Bronstert, Axel and Creutzfeldt, Benjamin and Gr{\"a}ff, Thomas and Hajnsek, Irena and Heistermann, Maik and Itzerott, Sibylle and Jagdhuber, Thomas and Kneis, David and Lueck, Erika and Reusser, Dominik and Zehe, Erwin},
  title     = {Potentials and constraints of different types of soil moisture observations for flood simulations in headwater catchments},
  series = {Natural hazards : journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards},
  volume    = {60},
  journal   = {Natural hazards : journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards},
  number    = {3},
  publisher = {Springer},
  address   = {New York},
  issn      = {0921-030X},
  doi       = {10.1007/s11069-011-9874-9},
  pages     = {879 -- 914},
  year      = {2012},
  abstract  = {Flood generation in mountainous headwater catchments is governed by rainfall intensities, by the spatial distribution of rainfall and by the state of the catchment prior to the rainfall, e. g. by the spatial pattern of the soil moisture, groundwater conditions and possibly snow. The work presented here explores the limits and potentials of measuring soil moisture with different methods and in different scales and their potential use for flood simulation. These measurements were obtained in 2007 and 2008 within a comprehensive multi-scale experiment in the Weisseritz headwater catchment in the Ore-Mountains, Germany. The following technologies have been applied jointly thermogravimetric method, frequency domain reflectometry (FDR) sensors, spatial time domain reflectometry (STDR) cluster, ground-penetrating radar (GPR), airborne polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (polarimetric SAR) and advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) based on the satellite Envisat. We present exemplary soil measurement results, with spatial scales ranging from point scale, via hillslope and field scale, to the catchment scale. Only the spatial TDR cluster was able to record continuous data. The other methods are limited to the date of over-flights (airplane and satellite) or measurement campaigns on the ground. For possible use in flood simulation, the observation of soil moisture at multiple scales has to be combined with suitable hydrological modelling, using the hydrological model WaSiM-ETH. Therefore, several simulation experiments have been conducted in order to test both the usability of the recorded soil moisture data and the suitability of a distributed hydrological model to make use of this information. The measurement results show that airborne-based and satellite-based systems in particular provide information on the near-surface spatial distribution. However, there are still a variety of limitations, such as the need for parallel ground measurements (Envisat ASAR), uncertainties in polarimetric decomposition techniques (polarimetric SAR), very limited information from remote sensing methods about vegetated surfaces and the non-availability of continuous measurements. The model experiments showed the importance of soil moisture as an initial condition for physically based flood modelling. However, the observed moisture data reflect the surface or near-surface soil moisture only. Hence, only saturated overland flow might be related to these data. Other flood generation processes influenced by catchment wetness in the subsurface such as subsurface storm flow or quick groundwater drainage cannot be assessed by these data. One has to acknowledge that, in spite of innovative measuring techniques on all spatial scales, soil moisture data for entire vegetated catchments are still today not operationally available. Therefore, observations of soil moisture should primarily be used to improve the quality of continuous, distributed hydrological catchment models that simulate the spatial distribution of moisture internally. Thus, when and where soil moisture data are available, they should be compared with their simulated equivalents in order to improve the parameter estimates and possibly the structure of the hydrological model.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{VineyBormannBreueretal.2009,
  author    = {Viney, Neil R. and Bormann, Helge and Breuer, Lutz and Bronstert, Axel and Croke, Barry F. W. and Frede, Hans-Georg and Gr{\"a}ff, Thomas and Hubrechts, Lode and Huisman, Johan A. and Jakeman, Anthony J. and Kite, Geoffrey W. and Lanini, Jordan and Leavesley, George and Lettenmaier, Dennis P. and Lindstroem, Goeran and Seibert, Jan and Sivapalan, Murugesu and Willems, Patrick},
  title     = {Assessing the impact of land use change on hydrology by ensemble modelling (LUCHEM) II : ensemble combinations and predictions},
  issn      = {0309-1708},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.advwatres.2008.05.006},
  year      = {2009},
  abstract  = {This paper reports on a project to compare predictions from a range of catchment models applied to a mesoscale river basin in central Germany and to assess various ensemble predictions of catchment streamflow. The models encompass a large range in inherent complexity and input requirements. In approximate order of decreasing complexity, they are DHSVM, MIKE-SHE, TOPLATS, WASIM-ETH, SWAT, PRMS, SLURP, HBV, LASCAM and IHACRES. The models are calibrated twice using different sets of input data. The two predictions from each model are then combined by simple averaging to produce a single-model ensemble. The 10 resulting single-model ensembles are combined in various ways to produce multi-model ensemble predictions. Both the single-model ensembles and the multi-model ensembles are shown to give predictions that are generally superior to those of their respective constituent models, both during a 7-year calibration period and a 9- year validation period. This occurs despite a considerable disparity in performance of the individual models. Even the weakest of models is shown to contribute useful information to the ensembles they are part of. The best model combination methods are a trimmed mean (constructed using the central four or six predictions each day) and a weighted mean ensemble (with weights calculated from calibration performance) that places relatively large weights on the better performing models. Conditional ensembles. in which separate model weights are used in different system states (e.g. summer and winter, high and low flows) generally yield little improvement over the weighted mean ensemble. However a conditional ensemble that discriminates between rising and receding flows shows moderate improvement. An analysis of ensemble predictions shows that the best ensembles are not necessarily those containing the best individual models. Conversely, it appears that some models that predict well individually do not necessarily combine well with other models in multi-model ensembles. The reasons behind these observations may relate to the effects of the weighting schemes, non- stationarity of the climate series and possible cross-correlations between models.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{BreuerWillemsBormannetal.2009,
  author    = {Breuer, Lutz and Willems, Patrick and Bormann, Helge and Bronstert, Axel and Croke, Barry and Frede, Hans Georg and Gr{\"a}ff, Thomas and Hubrechts, Lode and Kite, Geoffrey and Lanini, Jordan and Leavesley, George and Lettenmaier, Dennis P. and Lindstroem, Goeran and Seibert, Jan and Sivapalan, Mayuran and Viney, Neil R.},
  title     = {Assessing the impact of land use change on hydrology by ensemble modeling (LUCHEM) : I: model intercomparison with current land use},
  issn      = {0309-1708},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.advwatres.2008.10.003},
  year      = {2009},
  abstract  = {This paper introduces the project on 'Assessing the impact of land use change on hydrology by ensemble modeling (LUCHEM)' that aims at investigating the envelope of predictions on changes in hydrological fluxes due to land use change. As part of a series of four papers, this paper outlines the motivation and setup of LUCHEM, and presents a model intercomparison for the present-day simulation results. Such an intercomparison provides a valuable basis to investigate the effects of different model structures on model predictions and paves the ground for the analysis of the performance of multi-model ensembles and the reliability of the scenario predictions in companion papers. in this study, we applied a set of 10 lumped, semi-lumped and fully distributed hydrological models that have been previously used in land use change studies to the low mountainous Dill catchment. Germany. Substantial differences in model performance were observed with Nash-Sutcliffe efficiencies ranging from 0.53 to 0.92. Differences in model performance were attributed to (1) model input data, (2) model calibration and (3) the physical basis of the models. The models were applied with two sets of input data: an original and a homogenized data set. This homogenization of precipitation, temperature and leaf area index was performed to reduce the variation between the models. Homogenization improved the comparability of model simulations and resulted in a reduced average bias, although some variation in model data input remained. The effect of the physical differences between models on the long-term water balance was mainly attributed to differences in how models represent evapotranspiration. Semi-lumped and lumped conceptual models slightly outperformed the fully distributed and physically based models. This was attributed to the automatic model calibration typically used for this type of models. Overall, however, we conclude that there was no superior model if several measures of model performance are considered and that all models are suitable to participate in further multi-model ensemble set-ups and land use change scenario investigations.},
  language  = {en}
}