Potsdam Water Talks

Groundwater recharge is a key control on water availability, ecosystem functioning, and the resilience of water resources under climate variability and change. In karst regions, recharge is particularly difficult to quantify because subsurface heterogeneity and preferential flow pathways decouple infiltration signals from traditional surface observations, while data are often sparse. In this talk, I will present two complementary perspectives on recharge estimation in karst landscapes and beyond. First, I will highlight large-scale modelling studies that aim to represent karst-specific processes across broad regions, and I will discuss what we learn when we move from local case studies to continental-scale assessments. Second, I will introduce data-driven approaches that leverage soil moisture information to infer recharge dynamics, offering an observationally anchored alternative to conventional workflows that rely primarily on meteorological forcing and model structure assumptions. I will conclude with a short perspective on future challenges and opportunities.

Much of hydrologic knowledge stems from laboratory experiments and research basins. This has led to a variety of findings on which processes are dominant under specific conditions, and which hydrologic models best represent such processes. 
In this seminar, I will synthesize some of my work over the past decade aimed at generalizing such local hydrologic understanding into broadly applicable findings. The talk will cover model development, large-domain model application, hydrologic classification and synthesis, within the broad theme of hydrology at scale. I will end the talk with a brief overview of current research challenges and outline potential paths toward improving hydrologic prediction at large geographical scales.