TERENO: German network of terrestrial environmental observatories

Abstract

Central elements of the TERENO network are “terrestrial observatories” at the catchment scale which were selected in climate sensitive regions of Germany for the regional analyses of climate change impacts. Within these observatories small scale research facilities and test areas are placed in order to accomplish energy, water, carbon and nutrient process studies across the different compartments of the terrestrial environment. Following a hierarchical scaling approach (point-plot-field) these detailed information and the gained knowledge will be transferred to the regional scale using integrated modelling approaches. Furthermore, existing research stations are enhanced and embedded within the observatories. In addition, mobile measurement platforms enable monitoring of dynamic processes at the local scale up to the determination of spatial pattern at the regional scale are applied within TERENO.

Validation of Spaceborne and Modelled Surface Soil Moisture Products with Cosmic-Ray Neutron Probes

“…Soils can be locally very heterogeneous due to their origin in floodplain deposits and loess [79]. The Rur catchment is part of the Terrestrial Environmental Observatories (TERENO) network [80,81]. Several point-scale soil moisture sensors have been already used to evaluate airborne active and passive L-band retrievals [18,78,82] and to validate SMOS [18,83], ASCAT [83], and AMSR2 products [14].…”

The integrated water balance and soil data set of the Rollesbroich hydrological observatory

“…-climate/runoff/water quality station: doi:10.5880/TERENO.2016.001 (Bogena, 2016a) -EC/climate station Rollesbroich: doi:10.5880/TERENO.2016.004 (Schmidt, 2016) -SoilNet Rollesbroich: doi:10.5880/TERENO.2016.003 (Bogena, 2016b) Please note that the NetCDF format is used, which is a standard format for data exchange. There is free conversion software available to convert the NetCDF data format in other data formats, e.g., at http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/ panoply/.…”

Effects of differential hillslope‐scale water retention characteristics on rainfall–runoff response at the Landscape Evolution Observatory

“…LEO is unique in its field due to its fully controlled environment, state‐of‐the‐art measuring equipment, and hillslope‐size scale. Other projects with similar research goals include the Critical Zone Observatory network in the USA (Anderson, Bales, & Duffy, ; Guo & Lin, ), the artificial catchment “Chicken Creek” located in Germany (Gerwin, Raab, Biemelt, Bens, & Hüttl, ; Hofer, Lehmann, Biemelt, Stähli, & Krafczyk, ), and the TERENO program (Bogena et al, ; Zacharias et al, ), also located in Germany. Although these projects are similar in the sense that they also attempt to improve understanding of coupled processes in catchments, they take place at a different spatial scale.…”