Problem and Knowledge Gap: Natural landscapes exhibit distinct spatial patterns of vegetation, soils, topography, and rivers that harmonize with their climatic and hydrological settings. The alteration of these landscapes affects water flow paths and travel times, influencing the severity of floods and droughts, and impacting water quality in both ground and surface waters. Adopting a more natural spatial configuration of water infiltration, usage, storage, and river flows is anticipated to enhance landscape resilience to climate extremes and improve water quality. However, the degree to which such configurations improve resilience to floods and droughts, and affect carbon and nutrient cycling, remains largely unknown and likely varies with local landscape characteristics. Additionally, it is unquantified which landscape components are most critical for generating resilience. Identifying and reshaping these key elements will be crucial for enhancing the resilience of Dutch sand landscapes.
Research Questions:
- What are the spatial patterns of water infiltration, usage, storage, and river flows for the Dommel and Vecht watersheds that emerge from simulating dynamic interactions between vegetation, soils, rivers, and landscape wetness conditions under different climate scenarios?
- To what extent do watershed-scale natural water flow and storage patterns increase resilience against droughts and floods compared to the current landscape configurations?
- How do natural water flow and storage patterns influence water flow paths and water residence times, and how do these changes affect water quality?
- With a changing climate, what are the most effective nature-inspired adaptive land-use strategies to increase landscape resilience?
By addressing these questions, we aim to quantify the resilience gains achieved through nature-inspired landscape configurations and to identify critical landscape components that enhance resilience to climate extremes. This knowledge will guide the design of more resilient Dutch sand landscapes.