From subsurface structures to functions and texture - linking virtual realities and experiments at the plot and hillslope scales

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This project will explore the interplay between soil water, tracer and soil heat budgets depending on the prevailing context and develop advanced approaches for their coupled treatment within the subsurface domains of an EFU (the least entity of the CAOS model). Based on an improved understanding of the fingerprints of vertical preferential flow in the water, mass and heat transport in the unsaturated zone we will derive suitable closure relations that account for these fingerprints in the unsaturated subsurface domain of an EFU during rainfall driven conditions. We will furthermore derive descriptions for water, mass and heat budgets in the unsaturated subsurface domain during energy driven conditions and derive the necessary constitutive relations that account for the effect of soil heterogeneity on storage of water, mass and energy based on virtual experiments. Next we will explore coupled water and heat transport in the saturated subsurface domain with special emphasis on groundwater surface water exchange and derive process descriptions of minimum adequate complexity. Furthermore we will contribute to an optimal combination of soil physical and geophysical methods for exploring near subsurface lateral structures at the hillslope scale in joined work task with Project F.