AQUATERRA
Sustainable land and water resources management

Research line 1 - Conservation Agriculture.

Soil properties and functions are studied with special reference to soil conservation and quality and its spatial and temporal variability. In PRECISION VITICULTURE we analyse the interaction between soil physics and chemistry, plant and climate parameters, and how different living and inert covers, in rows and alleys, affect the magnitude of these processes. In particular: spatio-temporal dynamics of water content and soil temperature, response times between plant, climate and soil parameters, vegetation vigour (chlorophyll content and NDVI), fungal virulence (with management support system), and spatial patterns of redistribution of soil and its main components (N-P-K and C) -sediment connectivity-. For this activity, permanent field installations (real time monitoring), periodic drone campaigns and field observations are available. In SOIL CONSERVATION, the main activities focus on: a) the impact of use and management on physical properties, organic matter and nutrient availability, b) the risk of erosion in agricultural and forestry land and c) eutrophication of waters due to the impact of excessive organic fertilisation of agricultural land and d) the effect of the addition of amendments from waste valorisation on soil properties.

Research line 2 - Hydrology - Hydrogeology. Numerical models.

Numerical models of water balance and solute flow and reactive transport.

Powerful and sophisticated hydrological basin models and numerical models of reactive solute flow and transport in porous and fractured media have been developed. These codes are continuously updated in the framework of R&D&I projects. Some of the novel and high impact aspects of this line of research include: (1) The assessment of water resources under historical conditions and under future climate change (CC) scenarios to evaluate the effects of CC; (2) The application of numerical models of solute flow and transport in porous and fractured media at different scales from laboratory tests, field tests and at regional scales; (3) The application of pollutant transport models in aquifers contaminated by nitrates, radiological contamination (uranium transport from the uranium factory in Andújar) and persistent organic pollutants such as lindane in the Sardas landfill in Sabiñánigo (Huesca); (5) Coupled numerical models of water flow, solute and heat transport, chemical reactions, microbiological and radioactive processes in deformable media for safety studies of high level radioactive waste repositories: 6) The application of models to mining activities: chemical quality of mining lakes, estimation of generic water quality reference levels in mineralised areas and assessment of environmental effects of mining activities.

Research line 3 - DATA PROCESSING, GEOPHYSICS.

Acquisition and analysis of data in hydrology, soil science, climatology and agronomy.

Hydrological variables such as water flow and water table, edaphic variables such as soil water content, as well as various climate elements and vegetation parameters are being monitored with sensors. Remote sensing techniques are used. The real-time sending of the measured data to the cloud greatly facilitates the acquisition, management and downloading of the data, making it possible to calculate response times between the variables studied.

Equipment is available for measuring geophysical parameters such as apparent electrical conductivity (ECa) and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) in soils and the unsaturated zone. The results have been correlated with organic matter content, texture or nutrient availability (ECa) and water table or water content (IRT).

Geostatistical, fractal and multifractal analysis is used to characterise the spatio-temporal variability of climatic, hydrological and edaphic data series.