Project description
Improving river health by studying reactive substances transport
The quality of river water is profoundly influenced by reactive dissolved substances whose fate is primarily controlled by the hyporheic zone. This critical interface between fast-flowing river water and the slower flow in the pores of riverbed sediments creates an ideal environment for biogeochemical reactions. These reactions play a vital role in shaping river ecosystem health. The ERC-funded HYPOR project aims to advance our understanding of how the hyporheic zone contributes to and regulates reactive transport in rivers. By exploring spatial and temporal variations across multiple scales, HYPOR will incorporate their effects into innovative, bottom-up models. These models will enhance the prediction of water quality in rivers, ultimately informing strategies to protect and sustain aquatic ecosystems.
Objective
Reactive substances transported in river corridors undergo several transformations having important implications for the fate of toxic chemicals and the health of fluvial ecosystems. Delivery of substances into the slow and geochemically-microbially rich hyporheic zone delays their downstream transport and promotes opportunities for biogeochemical reactions. The resulting delay and reactivity at larger scales are shaped by the ubiquitous heterogeneity of environmental porous media and the temporal fluctuations that typify river corridors which control transport and mixing limitations in the reactive regions of the hyporheic zone. However, the most widespread upscaling pictures neglect these fundamental aspects, assuming either a transient storage in a well-mixed hyporheic zone or pure advective transport along non-interacting hyporheic streamlines. The paradigm of oversimplification leads to severe shortcomings, such as limited transferability of findings and great uncertainty in large-scale predictions.
HYPOR pursues a paradigm-shift: ground the upscaling of reactive-transport in river corridors on the mechanistic knowledge of the hyporheic dynamics. First, we will improve the understanding of heterogeneity and temporal fluctuations controls through comprehensive numerical investigations at small scales. Second, this will allow to quantify, on a physical basis, the stochasticity in the transport and mixing limitations of point-injections (Green functions) as they encounter reactive regions. The stochastic evolutions of Green functions will be the building block of a novel reactive-transport upscaled model to overcome current shortcomings. Yet, the hidden nature of the hyporheic zone leads to uncertainty. Third, HYPOR will exploit the link between small-scale uncertain properties and physics-based upscaling elements in a new uncertainty analysis framework that propagates uncertainty at small scales onto large-scale predictions, quantifying their reliability.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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20133 Milano
Italy
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