Towards improving the understanding of groundwater discharge to mountain streams and its dominant landscape controls across scales

• Applicant: Sebastian Gnann, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Hydrogeology, Hydrology, Limnology, Urban Water Management, Water Chemistry, Integrated Water Resources Management
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 567344228

Mountain streams supply both their headwaters and downstream areas with water and are therefore an important freshwater source for ecosystems and societies. Mountain streams are particularly sensitive to climate change, as rising temperatures will have a direct impact on meltwater contributions to streams. Comparatively little attention has been paid to the role of groundwater in sustaining streamflow in mountain regions, though, which compromises our ability to provide reliable projections about how these streams will respond to climate change. This project aims to improve our understanding of groundwater discharge to mountain streams, identify the most important landscape features that control it, and investigate the extent to which this understanding can be transferred to the scale of whole countries. To this end, we plan to set up a monitoring network comprising 36 streamflow gauging stations in 6 nested catchments in the Swiss Alps and analyze the measurements together with an existing dataset covering 331 catchments in Switzerland. The results will improve our understanding of groundwater’s role in the mountain water cycle – a prerequisite for the sustainable management of water resources in the future.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Markus Weiler