Research Projects Hydrology

The research of the hydrology group focuses on 

  • hydrologic process research for improved understanding of water flow paths, storage and release at the headwater catchment scale.
  • the development of new methods to model hydrological processes accounting for our latest insights into how nature works and enabling better predictions of how hydrological systems will behave in the future.
  • integration of new data types into hydrological models, e.g. satellite data or other remote sensing data or water tracer data.

The developed methods are applied and tested in various climates, including high Alpine environments and in various water management contexts (e.g. flood protection, hydropower). Fields of application include water resources quantification at the catchment scale, flood forecasting, hydropower production or water temperature prediction.

 

Forschungsschwerpunkte der Gruppe:

  • Prozessverständnis zu Fliesswegen, Speichern & Abflüssen
  • Entwicklung neuer hydrologischer Modelle, welche anhand der neuesten Forschung bessere Voraussagen für hydrologische Systeme ermöglichen.
  • Integration verschiedener Datengrundlagen in hydrologische Modelle, zum Beispiel Satellitenbilder

Die entwickelten Methoden kommen in verschiedenen Bereichen zur Anwendung. Beispiele sind Hochwasservorhersagen, Wassertemperaturmodellierungen oder Wasserressourcenabschätzungen für Wassernutzung (z.B. Wasserkraft) und zum Schutz von Ökosystemen.

SNF-Projects (ongoing)

  • Hydrology from Genes: what does eDNA tell us about melt contributions? PI Ceperley in collaboration with Oregan State University (Sept 2025 - Aug 2029), link

  • 21st cEnTury Evolution of small glacieRs and their impact on regioNAL hydrology in the HIMAlayas (ETERNALHIMA) (collaboration ETHZ, link)

SNF-Projects (finalized):

  • SEHAG Subproject 2 -Impact of climate change on groundwater storage in high Alpine catchments: from observation to model predictions (collaboration TUM, Germany, link)

  • Glacier melt water - groundwater connectivity: the case of the Otemma glacier (link)

  • Quantification of Alpine water resources revisited (link)