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The GIUZ blog is a collection of diverse short texts from our department. Read the latest entry about our water walk in Zurich: https://blog.geo.uzh.ch/wasser-stadt-zurich/
Anna Leuteritz received the award for best oral presentation at the ERB conference 2024 held in Inca, Mallorca.
The newly published paper "Large-sample hydrology – a few camels or a whole caravan?" by Franziska Clerc-Schwarzenbach, Giovanni Selleri, Mattia Neri, Elena Toth, Ilja van Meerveld, and Jan Seibert was selected as a highlight paper in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. In this paper, different large-sample datasets were compared and tested for hydrological modelling.
Together with others, Sarah Hanus published a perspective paper entitled "Cryosphere–groundwater connectivity is a missing link in the mountain water cycle" in Nature Water.
Together with others, Aline Meyer Oliveira and Ilja van Meerveld published a review paper entitled "Using stable isotopes to inform water resource management in forested and agricultural ecosystems" in the Journal of Environmental Management.
In collaboration with "VoiceMap" we created an audio-guided walk along some hydrological sites in Zurich. Find more information here:
https://www.geo.uzh.ch/en/units/h2k/Learn-about-water/Voicemap-Zurich.html
A new paper was published by Sarah Hanus and Daniel Viviroli together with other contributors. It is entitled "Coupling a large-scale glacier and hydrological model (OGGM v1.5.3 and CWatM V1.08) – towards an improved representation of mountain water resources in global assessments" and was published in Geoscientific Model Development. They found that increases in future discharge are attenuated, and decreases are exacerbated when glaciers are represented explicitly in the large-scale hydrological model simulations.
On 3 July, Izabela Bujak-Ozga presented her work at her public defense and received her PhD. Congratulations, Dr. Izabela!
A new paper was published by Aline Meyer Oliveira and Ilja van Meerveld together with other contributors of the WatForFun project. It is entitled "Inundation dynamics in seasonally dry floodplain forests in southeastern Brazil" and was published in Hydrological Processes. In the six floodplain forests they investigated, they found a large variation of inundation dynamics.
Eleni Kritidou got an EGU travel grant that she used to go the the International Conference on Geostatistics for Environmental Applications (geoENV) in Crete. There, she presented her work on "Uncertainty evaluation of simulated extreme floods in Switzerland".
On Saturday, 8 June, from 12:00 to 17:00, we celebrate science and nature at the Irchel Science and Nature Festival. Different institutes of the Faculty of Science will present their research. There are plenty of activities for children and adults, and it's all for free. We are looking forward to seeing you there! More info here: https://www.mnf.uzh.ch/en/oeffentlichkeit/mnf-festival.html
On 21 May, Izabela Bujak successfully defended her PhD in front of her committee at EPFL. Congratulations!
Izabela's public defense will take place in the first week of July.
At the Leuven Institute for Advanced Study of KU Leuven, an interdisciplinary working group is creating a position paper about the topic "Water: Scarcity and Flooding" with a focus on the Flanders region in Belgium. Eleni Kritidou and Franziska Clerc-Schwarzenbach of H2K had the opportunity to visit the working group for an international exchange.
In zwei Wochen findet der Biodiversitätstag zum Thema Wasser statt. In diesem Rahmen gibt es am Campus Irchel eine CrowdWater Führung. Unter diesem Link kann man sich dafür anmelden: ema.uzh.ch/RJHAA
The Running Water team was again part of the legendary "SOLA-Stafette" of the ASVZ, Zurich's academic sport association. In 10 hours, 22 minutes, and 2 seconds, we ran a total of 113 kilometers, divided into 14 sections.
Jana Erdbrügger, Ilja van Meerveld, Jan Seibert, and Kevin Bishop published a video paper entitled "Spatiotemporal dynamics of soil moisture and stream states based on qualitative citizen science methods" in Hydrological Processes. Curious what a video paper is? Have a closer look!
H2K was represented at the EGU24 in Vienna with many presentations, posters, and PICOs. The group picture shows some of the current and former H2K members.
Together with others, Sara Blanco Ramírez published a paper entitled "Empowering citizen scientists to improve water quality: from monitoring to action" in Frontiers in Water.
Der Klimawandel bestimmt auch den Zustand unserer Gewässer. Damit wir uns besser darauf einstellen und vorbereiten können, braucht es jede Menge Daten von Flüssen, Bächen oder Seen auf der ganzen Welt. Diese lassen sich mit der CrowdWater App sammeln. Sie wurde im Kinderkanal des deutschen Fernsehens vorgestellt.
At "Tag der Hydrologie" in Berlin, Mirjam Scheller won the poster award for the most innovative study.
This year's "Tag der Hydrologie" is taking place in Berlin - H2K is represented!
Mirjam Scheller, Ilja van Meerveld and Jan Seibert published a paper entitled "How well can people observe the flow state of temporary streams?" in Frontiers in Environmental Science. They conducted surveys at eight temporary streams to test their hypothesis (see picture).
Mirjam Scheller, Ilja van Meerveld, Eric Sauquet, Marc Vis and Jan Seibert published a paper entitled "Are temporary stream observations useful for calibrating a lumped hydrological model?" in Journal of Hydrology. They tested this hypothesis using 92 catchments in France (see picture).
Together with others, Daniel Viviroli published the CAMELS-CH dataset and the corresponding paper entitled "CAMELS-CH: hydro-meteorological time series and landscape attributes for 331 catchments in hydrologic Switzerland".
Jan Seibert, Franziska Clerc-Schwarzenbach, and Ilja van Meerveld published a commentary entitled "Getting your money's worth: Testing the value of data for hydrological model calibration" in Hydrological Processes. It describes a model-based approach to assess the value of data.
Jana Erdbrügger successfully defended her PhD work about groundwater in a boreal landscape. Congratulations!
Meret Vogler received the National Association of Geosciences Teachers Oustanding TA Award. This award honors undergraduate and graduate students who have demonstrated excellence as Teaching Assistants. As a TA she helped produce instructional videos of Hands-on-Hydrolog experiments. Congratulations!
Fabian Maier, Florian Lustenberger and Ilja van Meerveld published a paper entitled "Assessment of plot-scale sediment transport on young moraines in the Swiss Alps using a fluorescent sand tracer" in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. A new method to assess sediment transport on hillslopes of moraines is presented in the paper alongside a demonstration of the technique on two moraines in the Swiss Alps
Aline Meyer Oliveira, Ilja van Meerveld, Marc Vis and Jan Seibert published a paper entitled "Assessment of the Value of Remotely Sensed Surface Water Extent Data for the Calibration of a Lumped Hydrological Model" in Water Resources Research. In this paper, they evaluated if remote sensing data could be used to calibrate a hydrological model for Brazilian catchments. They found that the main limitation was the coarse spatial resolution of remote sensing imagery, and not its limited temporal resolution.
Jana Erdbrügger won second prize in the University Library's data visualisation competition! She entered the competition with her visualisation of soil moisture data. Congratulations!
We held the "SwimSci" event again this year in beautiful weather. After a day filled with interesting presentations, we concluded with an autumnal swim in the lake.
Sara Blanco, Ilja van Meerveld and Jan Seibert published a paper entitled "Citizen Science approaches for water quality measurements" in Science of the Total Environment. It is a review paper about water quality monitoring methods in citizen science projects.
In fall 2023, we will again be part of the CUAHSI Virtual University. As we are providing one module, this allows up to 15 UZH student to sign up for courses. All courses are given by experts in the respective fields, so this is a great chance to take specialised hydrology-related classes. Read more to find out more about the courses and how to sign up.
Maude Barlow, activist and co-initiator of the worldwide "Blue Community" movement gave an impressive talk at GIUZ. At the Dies Academicus she received the honorary doctorate of the Faculty of Science in recognition of her commitment to the human right to water and its sustainable use.
At EGU23, Sarah Hanus received the Jim Dooge Award for her paper entitled "Future changes in annual, seasonal and monthly runoff signatures in contrasting Alpine catchments in Austria". Her paper was selected as the most outstanding paper in HESS in the year 2021. The paper is Sarah's Master's thesis work. Congratulations!
Ilja van Meerveld and Jan Seibert wrote a blog article about how to connect sustainable travel and paper writing.
The H2K group visited Lake Grimsel and the construction site where a replacement for the existing dam wall is built currently. Daniel Viviroli wrote a blog article about the hydropower dilemma in this region.
Victor Gauthier received the best poster award at the ERB 2022 for his poster about "Near surface flow pathways in a Swiss pre-Alpine catchment".
Fabian Maier successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Effects of soil and vegetation development on surface hydrological characteristics of moraines in the Swiss Alps". Congratulations!
Sarah Hanus, PhD student at H2K, has received the "Best Science Graduate 2021" award of the entire TU Delft for her Master's Thesis - out of about 5000 annual graduates! Congratulations!
The paper of Leonie Kiewiet with the title "Do stream water solute concentrations reflect when connectivity occurs in a small, pre-Alpine headwater catchment?" was distinguished with the Jim Dooge Award for the most outstanding paper of 2020 at HESS. Congratulations!
Covid-19 hat diesen Frühling viele Exkursionen für Geographiestudierende unmöglich gemacht. Doch dank eines Lehrkredit-Projekts können sie nun auf eigene Faust entdecken, wie Wasser die Stadt Zürich prägt.
Leonie Kiewiet successfully defended her PhD thesis on "Using Shallow Groundwater chemistry to Determine the Sources of Streamflow in a Pre-Alpine Catchment". Congratulations!
Kirsti Hakala successfully defended her PhD thesis on "Climate change impacts on hydrology - informing the design of the modeling chain and supporting adaptation". Congratulations!
Möchten Sie wissen, wie Sie mit Beiträgen bei CrowdWater zur Forschung beitragen können? Oder sind Sie bereits bei CrowdWater dabei und möchten erfahren was man dank Ihren Beiträgen erreichen kann? Dann schauen Sie doch beim neuen CrowdWater Kurs rein.
Barbara Strobl and Simon Etter successfully defended their PhD theses entitled "Quality of crowdsourced water level observations" and "CrowdWater: Motivations of Citizen Scientists, the Accuracy and the Potential of Crowd-Based Data for Hydrological Model Calibration". Congratulations!
Our paper on "Upper and lower benchmarks in hydrological modelling" was the top-cited paper in Hydrological Processes 2019! You can find the paper here!
Scientists from around the world have assessed the planet's 78 mountain glacier-based water systems and ranked them in order of their importance to adjacent lowland communities, as well as their vulnerability to future environmental and socioeconomic changes.
Der Klimawandel hat Auswirkungen auf die Wasservorkommen in der Schweiz. Am deutlichsten ist die Verschiebung der Niederschläge von Schnee zu Regen, wodurch es zu einer Verlagerung in der zeitlichen Verteilung des Abflusses kommt. Darüber hinaus wird die Schweiz indirekt auch von Veränderungen der weltweiten Wasserverfügbarkeit betroffen sein. Beitrag von Jan Seibert in "aqua viva" Nr. 3/2019, Themenheft "Gewässer in Zeiten des Klimawandels". Die Artikel der aqua viva finden Sie hier .
Citizen scientists collect large amounts of very valuable data, yet the quality of data is an important issue. The CrowdWater game shows a playful way to improve their accuracy.
Ling Wang successfully defended her PhD thesis on "Intelligent Sampling for Event-Based Hydrological Modelling". Congratulations!
Florian Lustenberger received an award in the 2019 SNSF Scientific Image Competition in the category "Locations and instruments". His photo documents a high intensity rainfall simulation during the fieldwork season 2018 in the HILLSCAPE project. Congratulations!
The H2K group participated again in this year's SOLA event and it was fun as always. Running water finished with an excellent overall time of 9:24:23 and was ranked among the top 200 teams!
Jan Seibert received an Outstanding Editor Award for Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS) at the European Geoscience Union (EGU) Conference in Vienna 2019. Congratulations!
Maria Staudinger received a poster award in the category of "most innovative study" at the "Tag der Hydrologie" 2019 conference in Karlsruhe. Congratulations!
Nena Susanna Griessinger successfully defended her PhD thesis on "Relevance of Snowmelt Processes for Cold Region Hydrology - from Measurements to Models". Congratulations!
The multidisciplinary HILLSCAPE project had its first field seeason at the Sustenpass. A movie about their work is out now.
Leonie Kiewiet received a poster design award at the Swiss Geoscience Meeting 2018 in Bern in the field of hydrology. Congratulations!
Sandra Pool successfully defended her PhD thesis on "Value of Hydrograph Characteristics or Single Discharge Observations in Hydrological Modeling". Congratulations!
Rick Assendelft received poster awards for "Most Innovative Study" and "Best Reference to the Conference Topic" at the ERB (Euromediterranean Network of Experimental and Representative Basins) 2018 conference in Darmstadt. Congratulations!
Manuela Brunner received a distinction from the University of Zurich for her outstanding PhD thesis on "Catchment- and Event-Type Specific Synthetic Design Hydrographs. Estimation, Characterization, Regionalization, and Uncertainty". Congratulations!
Our poster presenting the CrowdWater project was awarded the poster prize for the most innovative study at the "Tag der Hydrologie" in Dresden.
Manuela Brunner successfully defended her PhD thesis on "Catchment- and Event-Type Specific Synthetic Design Hydrographs. Estimation, Characterization, Regionalization, and Uncertainty". Congratulations!
Sandra Pool received the Outstanding Student Paper Award at the American Geophysical Union conference (AGU) in December 2017 for the poster presentation on "Improving Regionalization with a Limited Number of Strategic Runoff Measurements: An Evaluation Based on 579 U.S. Catchments". Congratulations!