701-1673-00L Environmental Measurement Laboratory
| Semester | Autumn Semester 2021 |
| Lecturers | P. U. Lehmann Grunder, A. Carminati |
| Periodicity | yearly recurring course |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Comment | Number of participants limited to 24. Waiting list will be deleted September 24th, 2021. |
| Abstract | Measurements are the sole judge of scientific truth and provide access to unpredictable information, enabling the characterization and monitoring of complex terrestrial systems. Based on lectures and field- and laboratory training, the students learn to apply modern methods to determine forest inventory parameters and to measure subsurface properties and processes. |
| Objective | The students will be able to: - explain measurement principles that are used for characterization of landscapes and terrestrial systems - select appropriate measurement methods and sampling design to quantify key variables and processes above ground and in the subsurface - deploy sensors in the field - interpret collected laboratory and field data and report main conclusions deduced from measurements |
| Content | Week 1: Plant-Soil interactions – short introduction before sensor demonstration and installation in forest lab; Scholander pressure bomb (suction in leaves); LiCOR soil chamber Week 2: Lecture on Measurement Science, overview of water content and water potential sensors; data logging and data logger programming; tests in the lab Week 3: Introduction on soil physics; Field installation of sensors and field experiment; data collection for a few days; solar panel Week 4: Soil sampling in field lab including geoprobe measurements Week 5: Introduction on forest lab - Soil sampling in forest lab; root length density; Week 6: Lecture on geophysical methods on Subsurface Characterization: Basic principles of ERT, GPR, and EM; simple lab tests on effective resistivity Week 7: Demonstration and application of geophysical methods in the field Week 8: Lecture on plant soil relationship; connecting information below and above ground – data analysis Weeks 9 and 10: Forest characterization/ inventory: Principles of LiDAR; structures and features of the tree crowns, size/volume of the leaf area tree positions and diameters at breast height Weeks 11 and 12: Eddy covariance methods -Principles for field measurement of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and energy exchange between terrestrial surfaces and the atmosphere; Analysis of measured time series to determine evaporation rate and CO2-fluxes Week 13: Swiss Soil Monitoring networks – Monitoring of soil water content and potential; climate change and droughts Week 14: Global data – Global modeling and data interpretation; SoilGrids and OpenLandMap; exercises on Budyko analysis |
| Literature | Lecture material will be online for registered students using moodle |
| Prerequisites / Notice | The details of the schedule will be optimized based on the number of students; some blocks of the course will be offered as well to students of Environmental Engineering |