Quantification of functional hydro-biogeochemical indicators in Ecuadorian ecosystems and their reaction on global change
Final Report Abstract
The main scope of this knowledge transfer project was to develop and test functional hydrobiogeochemical indicators in a tight cooperation with Ecuadorian universities and promote the application of those indicators to non-university cooperation partners. As described in the original research proposal and the project extension, two Ecuadorian ecosystems have been investigated to delineate a set of suitable indicators to monitor the reaction or resilience of those ecosystems towards global change. As a result of this endeavour we established two ecohydrological observatories. The Quinoas River Ecohydrological Observatory in the Cajas National Park (CNP) and the Rio San Francisco Ecohydrological Observatory (RBSF). Since their establishment, both observatories are successfully maintained in cooperation with local stakeholders (i.e. NCI in Loja and ETAPA in Cuenca) and universities (i.e. UTPL in Loja and Universidad de Cuenca in Cuenca). A series of workshops has been held over the last years to facilitate the knowledge transfer and train students, lectures and local stakeholders alike. The results of our research and those workshops have allowed us to test the proposed hydro-biogeochemical indicators and to develop the aspired guidelines on how to monitor those indicators. The guidelines of this and other projects of the PAK have jointly been published in 2017 and have also been translated into Spanish. As part of our knowledge transfer, we also developed a web-based platform in cooperation with the Universidad de Cuenca to host and organize the environmental monitoring networks we established in Ecuador. This increases our cooperation with the Ecuadorian counterparts and ensures a long lasting effect of our knowledge transfer. In contrast to the joint data repository of the DFG PAK, ours is set up to organize field work, standardize data handling from the time of collection until quality control and to ease the exchange of data and information between the participating parties.
Publications
- (2016). Compositional diversity of rehabilitated tropical lands supports multiple ecosystem services and buffers uncertainties. Nature Communications, 7, 11877
Knoke, T., Paul, C., Hildebrandt, P., Calvas, B., Castro, L.M., Härtl, F., Döllerer, M., Hamer, U., Windhorst, D., Wiersma, Y.F., Fernández, G.F.C., Obermeier, W.A., Adams, J., Breuer, L., Mosandl, R., Beck, E., Weber, M., Stimm, B., Haber, W., Fürst, C. & Bendix, J.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11877) - (2016). Continuous versus event-based sampling: how many samples are required for deriving general hydrological understanding on Ecuador’s páramo region? Hydrological Processes, 30, 4059–4073
Correa, A., Windhorst, D., Crespo, P., Célleri, R., Feyen, J. & Breuer, L.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.10975) - (2016). Insights into the water mean transit time in a high-elevation tropical ecosystem. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 2987–3004
Mosquera, G.M., Segura, C., Vaché, K.B., Windhorst, D., Breuer, L. & Crespo, P.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-2987-2016) - (2017). Temporal dynamics in dominant runoff sources and flow paths in the Andean Páramo. Water Resources Research, 53, 5998–6017
Correa, A., Windhorst, D., Tetzlaff, D., Crespo, P., Célleri, R., Feyen, J. & Breuer, L.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/2016WR020187) - (2018). Effect of land cover and hydrometeorological controls on soil water DOC concentrations in a high-elevation tropical environment. Hydrological Processes, 32, 2624–2635
Pesántez, J., Mosquera, G.M., Crespo, P., Breuer, L. & Windhorst, D.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.13224)
