SP 01: The importance of the spatial arrangement of plant tissue for drought tolerance and growth of European beech
Persons involved:
Matthias Beyer (PI)
Steffen Dohmen (PhD student)
Research outline:
This SP aims at providing site-specific and high-resolution estimates of the forest water balance by a combined monitoring of below-ground and above-canopy water status and fluxes in order to assess the resilience of mixed forests. This will enable us to integrate spatio-temporally high-resolution observations of water transport processes with both smaller and larger-scale measurements and allow truly rigorous process descriptions and quantifications of the relationships between the soil and plant water balances.
We will provide in-situ ecohydrological data (soil and plant water isotopes, soil moisture) in a high spatio-temporal resolution (i.e., trees on defined plots and sub-daily) and UAV-derived transpiration estimates on the plot scale. For this, on one hand, we established a monitoring network for continuous monitoring of ecohydrological variables (soil moisture, root water uptake, soil water potential), and on the other hand, we will do regular UAV overflights for UAV-based thermal infrared monitoring to test the potential of UAV-borne real-time monitoring (and sampling) of individual plant water use and water status.
In doing so, we investigate our two main questions: How do water fluxes in forests differ depending on structure, hydroclimatic conditions and species composition? And can we estimate tree-specific water use derived from thermal imaging with UAV? We expected results of the groundwater recharge and the quantification of water fluxes under different hydroclimatic conditions and forest types.
Contact
Dr. Matthias Beyer
TU Braunschweig
Institute for Geoecology (IGÖ)
Langer Kamp 19c
38106 Braunschweig
Tel.: +49 (0) 531 391-5913
E-mail: matthias.beyer@tu-bs.de