Anthropogenic signatures in reservoir sediments: the past century (AReS)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Georg Stauch
• Subject Area: Physical Geography
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 573087913

Humans have been exerting a significant influence on the landscape for thousands of years. Since the beginning of industrialization, and especially since the mid-20th century, this influence has intensified globally. In the Anthropocene, humans have become the dominant factor for landscape changes. This is clearly manifested in their impact on the sediment cycle. While intensive agriculture, deforestation, and mining have led to an increase in sediment transport in rivers, the construction of reservoirs has resulted in a sediment deficit downstream. Reservoirs, due to their high accumulation rates and undisturbed sedimentation conditions, form excellent landscape archives. Many anthropogenically released pollutants, such as heavy metals, plastics, or persistent organic pollutants, are stored in these sediments. As part of the project, the accumulation rates of sediments and the pollutant load in five reservoirs in the northern Eifel are analysed. The reservoirs in the Eifel date back partly to the beginning of the 20th century and thus represent exceptionally good landscape archives. A focus of the research is a comparison of reservoirs with intensive human settlement in the catchment area and those with more natural landscapes or forested catchments. Previous studies on reservoir sediments in the Eifel have shown a marked decline in pollutant loads over the past 40 years. However, it remains unresolved whether this is a local or regional signal. Another focus of the project is the quantification of sediment deposits from individual flood events. It is still completely unclear how much sediment is deposited in the reservoirs during such events. For this purpose, selected reservoir beds will be regularly surveyed with high-resolution terrestrial LiDAR. Furthermore, the flood sediments will be analysed for their composition. The aim is to use these signatures to also detect past flood events in the reservoir sediments. The final goal of the project is to identify regional trends in sedimentation rates and pollutant loads in the reservoirs of the northern Eifel over the last century and to identify the associated causes in the catchment areas. This will also contribute to a better understanding of the landscape's response to climate change.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Dr. Joel Mohren; Dr. Janek Walk