Motivation

In the next decades, water will be a major driving force in changing and shaping our European environment, ecosystems, urban and agricultural land use. Water is the key factor for sustaining food, feed and biomass production for energy consumption (e.g. bio-based economy).

The water cycle will be strongly affected by climate change but the extent and impact on ecosystems functioning and services are only roughly known. Increasing hydrological extremes, such as floods and droughts, may lead to severe economic and societal impacts.

Fig.1. from Science  11 Aug 2017: Vol. 357, Issue 6351, pp. 588-590 DOI: 10.1126/science.aan2506

ENOHA aims to  improve our understanding of the impact and effects of climate change on the hydrological cycle by advancing hydrological and terrestrial sciences and integrating and developing novel measurement technologies (e.g. wireless sensor technologies, remote sensing platforms (e.g. Envisat, SMOS, SMAP, RapidEye)) in a multi-scale modeling approach.

Fig. 2. eLTER’s „Whole System“-Approach & cross-disciplinarity for the Live Supporting System (Source: eLTER presentation).

ENOHA will provide high quality multi-temporal multi-scale databases for hydrological modeling. ENOHA will be an essential pillar supporting the hydrologic component of the whole systems approach of the European Long-Term Ecosystem, Critical Zone and Socio-Ecological Research Infrastructure (eLTER, Fig. 2) to assess long-term changes in European ecosystems (natural, agricultural, forest,…) and will support the implementation and eventual adaptation of management plans and measures based on the European Regulatory Framework related to water (Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC, Nitrates Directive 91/676/EEC, Plant Protection Products Directive 91/414/EEC) and Cross-Compliance.