15.07.2020

Measuring Splash Erosion

After many years of research on splash erosion under vegetation influence, our group is still active in this exciting topic. After previous campaigns mostly measured erosion rates in the field with the Tübingen Splash Cup and vegetation characteristics manually, we are now breaking new ground. Together with our partners from the KIT in Karlsruhe and the University of Newcastle (Johannes Senn and Dr. Fabian Fassnacht), we are working on the determination of splash erosion, rain spectra, and tree traits using air- and land-based laser scanners. For this purpose, a concept paper was presented at the beginning of the year, whose assumptions are now being tested in the field. We have set up a new experiment in a forest area in Baden-Württemberg in which we calibrate modern measurement methods with classical splash measurements. The first results look very promising and we hope to report more about it soon.

Senn, J. A., Fassnacht, F. E., Eichel, J., Seitz, S., Schmidtlein, S. (2020): A new concept for estimating the influence of vegetation on throughfall kinetic energy using aerial laser scanning. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 45(7): 1487-1498. 

Link: doi: 10.1002/esp.4820