Where and when is water moving in soil? Incorporating spatiotemporal variability of subsurface flows to improve hydrological modelling

Understanding the soil water dynamics is essential for accurate projections of future climate change scenarios, where the frequency of droughts, floods, and wildfires is expected to increase. However, predicting soil water distribution and flow phenomena is still challenging due to their heterogeneity in time and space. Current models simplify soil physical properties and ignore how soil structure dynamics impact water flows, limiting the realistic representation of soil hydrological processes. This proposal will incorporate soil structure dynamics and spatiotemporal variability of water flows in hydrological modelling to improve the prediction of water distribution, pollutants transport, and risk of flooding.