The group applies modeling and field research to investigate the feedbacks between vegetation and the water cycle from the top of the canopy to the bottom of the rooting zone. Our main focus lies on interaction processes that have a capacity to tip the overall system behaviour, and we seek to understand the related mechanisms in order to better represent them in environmental models. We investigate canopy processes, vegetation induced spatial patterns of soil hydrologic properties and soil moisture as well as the process of root water uptake.
The group was in fall 2018 formed based on a joint professorship between the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ in Leipzig. We belong both to the Institute for Geosciences at the FSU and the Department Computational Hydrosystems at UFZ.
