ADAPT -Adaptation to Drought and Extremes: The Surface Soil-Groundwater Buffer under Climate Stress

The ADAPT project aims to investigate the effect of climate change management scenarios to counteract the increasingly prevalent water deficits during summer droughts in Germany and central Europe. Specifically, the project seeks to delineate a safe path for the use of treated wastewater as a resource for irrigating agriculture, and to quantify the effect of hydromorphological management approaches to improve water retention, that can, ultimately, enhance groundwater recharge. Irrigating with treated wastewater will increase the load of micropollutants in the environment and thereby potentially negatively affect naturally occurring filtration processes in the soil-groundwater continuum. The project’s goal is to merge expertise across a broad spectrum of geoscience and environmental engineering disciplines to improve the removal of micropollutants from wastewater and quantify the resilience of soils and aquifers. 

The project is divided into three research clusters:

• Cluster 1 (C1) – Measures for a climate change-adapted water supply: aiming to quantify micropollutants in environmental samples with the targeted development of chemical analytical methods, improve micropollutants elimination with the development of multi-barrier systems in water treatment, and promote water retention and groundwater recharge through a model-based evaluation of hydromorphological management.
• Cluster 2 (C2) – Nutrient and pollutant transport dynamics in the infiltration continuum: aiming to determine the environmental fate (retention, mobilization, breakthrough) of micropollutants in soils under the influence of extreme climate conditions, analyze the inhibition of natural nutrient cycles due to compounded drought and micropollutant stress on microbial communities in the subsurface, and identify resilience-promoting measures for an optimized soil-plant management in agricultural systems under the influence of climate and micropollutant contamination.
• Cluster 3 (C3) – Effects of climate change on surface water, soil, and groundwater: aiming to study the integrated soil function under climate stress and improve mechanistic soil-plant models for probabilistic predictions, better water quality at the catchment scale, and model groundwater recharge under climate stress scenarios and hydromorphological adaptation measures.

The FÖL is carrying out the sub-project TP7 - Adapted soil management in the soil-plant system. The aim is to test representative soils from different locations in Hesse and agronomic measures with a potential resilience-enhancing effect (composting, biopore density in the subsoil) for their ability to maintain soil functions relevant for plant growth even under abiotic stress.

Four pot experiments will be conducted: two on the adaptation of wheat under climatic stress (drought or temporary supersaturation) as a function of soil type and management and two on the irrigation of a crop rotation of alfalfa followed by onions and beet, with treated wastewater as a function of soil management and soil type.