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Illuminating tree-water dynamics in forest ecosystems with high-resolution geophysical monitoring

Objective

Forests play a crucial climate-regulating role, acting as a resilient interface between the soil and the atmosphere, fostering biodiversity, natural resources or carbon capture. However, climate change, especially severe droughts, may push them beyond their limits. Traditional eco-hydrological methods provide valuable insights on tree-water interactions, but observational gaps hinder a full understanding of how trees mitigate water stress and source water. What could be the advantages of geophysical monitoring? With recent advancements in geoelectrical and Fibre Optic Sensing (FOS) technologies, geophysics can monitor water storage and fluxes within and around trees with unprecedented resolution.

In ForestPulse, I will address methodological barriers to unlock the full potential of geophysical monitoring in forest ecosystems. Advanced monitoring systems at the Bambësch Forest, Luxembourg, will track seasonal and diurnal water dynamics wihtin the soil-tree-atmosphere continuum and enhance our understanding of tree responses to drought. Long-term geoelectrical monitoring, using a distributed network of open-source resistivity meters, will image soil and tree water dynamics on beech stands. Pilot FOS experiments will investigate finer-scale water uptake and flow patterns.

Hosted in a multidisciplinary team of eco-hydrologists at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, I will foster interdisciplinary collaboration. Secondments at the Université libre de Bruxelles and Royal Observatory of Belgium will support cutting-edge methodological advancements. ForestPulse will enhance my career by strategically focusing my geophysical expertise on eco-hydrological challenges. Integrating open-source geophysical tools into forest monitoring and improving the observability of tree-water dynamics will contribute to more sustainable forest management practices, help to fight climate change, and pave the way for future research projects on eco-hydrogeophysics.

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: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

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Coordinator

LUXEMBOURG INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Net EU contribution
€ 216 240,00
Address
5 AVENUE DES HAUTS FOURNEAUX
4362 Esch Sur Alzette
Luxembourg

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Region
Luxembourg Luxembourg Luxembourg
Activity type
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