Reactive transport

• Applicant: Dr. Janek Greskowiak
• Subject Area: Hydrogeology, Hydrology, Limnology, Urban Water Management, Water Chemistry, Integrated Water Resources Management ; Oceanography
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 431491505

DynaDeep will unravel the functionality and relevance of marine-terrestrial interactions below high-energy beaches, where we propose the deep subsurface to act as a dynamic bioreactor and unique microbial habitat affecting elemental net fluxes to the sea. To reach this goal, six subprojects will cooperate in joint field campaigns, shared sampling approaches as well as experimental work and use mathematical models in an integrative approach. Reactive transport processes in subterranean estuaries (STEs) have hardly been studied to date with the support of numerical reactive transport modelling. In groundwater science, reactive transport modelling has proven itself as an indispensable tool to untangle and quantify the coupled, nonlinear and typically non-intuitive interplay of hydrodynamic and biogeochemical processes. Applying reactive transport models in the postulated deep dynamic bioreactor below high energy beaches is a challenging yet promising way to unravel and elucidate the many intertwined processes. Subproject P6 will support the proposed research unit in its aim to understand these complex processes in the deep STE subject to highly transient boundary conditions. In close cooperation with and with steady feed-back from the project partners (P1-P5) we will develop reactive transport models capable of describing the processes and effects in the targeted laboratory experiments, as well as the composite behavior of the field-scale system. The resulting field-scale model will quantify the effects of the individual processes as well as the material fluxes in and out of the bioreactor. In cooperation with subproject P1 we will apply the final field-scale reactive transport model to a wide spectrum of field-scale conditions that are representative for high energy beaches in the world, thereby supporting the planning of Phase 2 of DynaDeep.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 5094: The Dynamic Deep Subsurface of High-Energy Beaches (DynaDeep)
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Vincent Post