Development of integrative measurement setups for throughfall erosivity under forest

JSPS International Fellowship for Research in Japan

Soil erosion is one of the most significant environmental problems of our time, with great damage to many ecosystems. The erosion process already starts with falling precipitation and its distribution within the plant cover. Soil degradation can also be observed under forest, especially at disturbance sites. Under some trees, the kinetic energy of raindrops (throughfall kinetic energy – TKE) can be higher than in open field (freefall kinetic energy – FKE), depending on the species. At the same time, the vegetation layer near the ground and the litter layer, to which the greatest protective effect is attributed, can be disturbed, which demonstrably leads to high erosion rates. Rainfall intercepted by vegetation layers is separated into different throughfall proportions, depending on the species. These throughfall partitioning and drop and drip forming patterns are affected by tree and leaf traits such as leaf shapes, leaf sizes or plant surface patterns. Subsequently, they strongly affect sediment and matter transport under forest, but a full understanding of the interactions of rainfall, vegetation and soils is not yet achieved. In this context, it is of great scientific interest to better understand the influence of plant properties on rainfall erosivity and thus splash erosion and to obtain data from a broader range of ecosystems in different climatic zones. To obtain data sets of greater significance, improvements of existing measurement technologies are necessary. The further development of these techniques and their application in natural settings is thus the core of this research project.

2022