Forschung / Research

Our group has two different research foci:

• Global water modelling
• Participatory methods in natural resources management

Global water modelling

Modelling of water resources, water use and water quality at the global scale (see background document) helps to understand the current situation of the world’s freshwater and to develop interesting scenarios of the future, both of which supports a sustainable management of the world’s water resources.

Current projects

• Combined Hydrological Modelling and Regional Geodetic Estimation of Water Storage Variations in Large River Basins using GRACE Data (REGHYDRO)

• Estimating flow requirements of freshwater ecosystems in China with the global hydrology and water use model WaterGAP

• Improved global scale modelling of potential and actual evapotranspiration

Past projects

• Estimation of global groundwater status with the WaterGAP model (WATCH)

• Consistent assessment of global fluxes of blue and green virtual water

• Improved approaches to model low flows and droughts with the global water model WaterGAP

• Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission of the European Space Agency - support of the German project office (SMOS)

• Development of a digital global map of irrigation areas

• Mapping of the historical irrigation extent back to year 1900

• Development of the global terrestrial nitrogen model WaterGAP-N

• Time-variable gravity and surface mass processes: validation, processing and first application of new satellite gravity data (TIVAGAM)

As part of these activities several global data sets have been developed by members of the working group. For details please read also the data sets section of our home page.

Participatory methods and transdisciplinary research in natural resources management

To identify sustainable and realizable strategies for natural resources management, a large number of actors must cooperate in a participatory process. We investigate the design of participatory processes, in particular three methods (actor modeling, actor-based modeling and Bayesian Networks) that have the potential to enhance social learning and knowledge integration.

Current projects

• Participatory methods for supporting an accelerated development and implementation of renewable energy sources
  (PM Renewable)

• Eliciting and integrating stakeholder perspectives of land and water management in the Tarim River Basin (SuMaRiO)

Past projects

• Systemic risks - Management strategies for pharmaceuticals in drinking water (start) ( completed in 2008, final report)

• Integrated analysis of mobile organic xenobiotics in rivers (INTAFERE) (completed in 2008)

geändert am 10. Oktober 2011  E-Mail: Webmasterhydrology@em.uni-frankfurt.de