Water storage and redistribution in the forest floor affect percolation, evaporation and DOM loss

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Forest floor (FF) is hydrologically highly relevant, but remains an only partiality explored nexus between precipitation, throughfall or stem flow, evaporation and infiltration into the soil. Particularly due to its changing properties in terms of thickness, physical properties and water repellency, which are largely unknow, specifically the spatial and temporal patterns. Overall leaching of dissolved organic matter (DOM) or dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from the FF into the soil are essential to describe the carbon balance of the FF. This proposal will study the spatial and temporal patterns of water fluxes in the FF in detail, linking its form and structure to the hydrological processes. This will be achieved by applying new forest floor grid-lysimeter, which include continuous in-situ measurements and DOM in the percolating water and novel experiments using wetting agents and dye tracer. But also the larger spatial patterns of FF thickness, type, vegetation and other properties will be measured and analyzed. We will link for the first time the spatial and temporal variability to the fluxes of DOM/DOC, as well as feedback mechanism to the atmosphere. This is even more relevant, when considering short and long-term changes of the FF due to climate change and changes in the composition of tree species including effects of droughts or warmer temperatures. The role of P1 in the FF-RU is to understand the hydrological properties and services of FF and their central role in water and nutrient fluxes as well as provide input for ecological modelling and many baseline datasets.