Riparian Wetlands: Hydrology Meets Biogeochemistry. Interactions Between Hydrology and Biogeochemistry Within Riparian Wetlands. Potential Implications for Internal Biogeochemical Process Distributions and Solute Exports

Interactions between hydrology and biogeochemistry at various spatio-temporal scales are important control mechanisms within terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and exist among different compartments and transition interfaces. Understanding the fundamental mechanistic couplings between hydrological and biogeochemical processes and how these couplings feed back into ecosystem services and functions is an interdisciplinary challenge that must be addressed especially in the context of humanly mediated climate change. Riparian wetlands, as a transition zone between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, occupy large fractions of terrestrial ecosystems and provide important ecohydrological services. Due to their anoxic environments, riparian wetlands are able to store significant amounts of carbon as peat and act as an effective nutrient sink e.g. for sulfur, phosphorous and nitrogen. Riparian wetlands are characterized by highly dynamical interactions between hydrologically controlled transport mechanisms and biogeochemically controlled substrate availability, which governs nutrient cycling as well as the sink and source functions of wetlands. Generally, these interactions and their potential implications on ecosystem functions are only poorly understood. The representation of the tight couplings between hydrology and biogeochemistry in mechanistic models is a very challenging task because they have revealed a complexity which is often beyond the capabilities of current models. The objective of this thesis is to investigate interactions between hydrology and biogeochemistry in riparian wetlands and to understand their potential implications for internal biogeochemical process distributions and solute mobilization. Additionally, one major focus of the thesis is the attempt to represent such fundamental couplings in a process-based, hydrological/biogeochemical modeling approach. To this end, this thesis uses a combination of field and virtual experiments, as well as catchment-scale numerical modeling, performed for the Lehstenbach catchment, which was exemplarily chosen as main study site. Results from the virtual experiments show very complex small-scale hydrological dynamics within the riparian areas. Here, runoff generation processes are strongly influenced by the spatial structure of the wetland-typical micro-topography (hummocks and hollows). Surface flow is episodically generated by a highly dynamical, threshold-controlled process where extended surface flow networks drain large fractions of the wetland's area. During intensive rainstorm events these surface flow networks, which contribute to stream discharge due to a fill and spill mechanism, dominate runoff generation. These fast flow components are characterized by very low residence times (minutes to hours) and once they are activated, the surface flow networks are able to rapidly mobilize large amounts of solutes, like nitrate or dissolved organic carbon (DOC), out of the wetlands by bypassing deeper anoxic layers. The importance of fast flow components for the catchment-scale mobilization of DOC was further confirmed by field investigations and catchment-scale numerical modeling. High frequency measurements of DOC in runoff of the Lehstenbach catchment revealed that DOC export is subject to substantial short term variations at an hourly to daily timescale. During intense rainstorms, DOC concentrations are up to ten times higher (up to 40 mg/L) compared to low flow conditions (~3-5 mg/L). Short term variations together with the dramatic rise of DOC concentrations in runoff during rainstorms can be explained by the episodically activation of fast flow components in the wetland areas. At the catchment-scale, application of a hydraulic mixing-cell (HMC) methodology in combination with numerical modeling has revealed that fast flow components like saturated overland flow are exclusively generated in the wetland areas during intensive rainstorm events. On an annual basis, exemplarily for the hydrological year 2001, the HMC analysis quantified the relative contribution of saturated overland flow related to the total discharge with 19.5%, which highlights the importance of riparian wetlands for catchment-scale runoff generation. Virtual experiments, additionally show that distinct shifts between surface and subsurface flow dominance, as a result of small-scale micro-topographic driven runoff generation in the wetlands, are responsible for very complex three-dimensional subsurface flow patterns showing a wide range of subsurface residence times. To investigate how these micro-topography induced subsurface flow patterns, together with the non-uniform hydrological and biogeogeochemical boundary conditions, affect the internal re-distribution and transformation of redox-sensitive species (like nitrate, sulfate or iron) a coupled hydrological/biogeogeochemical model was developed. In the model, wetland-typical biogeochemical processes are represented in a sequential stream tube approach where redox-sensitive processes are implemented as kinetic reactions. Simulations show the formation of local hot spots for redox-sensitive processes within the subsurface as a result of the complex subsurface flow paths and the transport-limited availability of electron acceptors and donors. Formation of hot spots was simulated for all key reduction processes including iron(III)-/sulfate reduction and denitrification as well as for the corresponding re-oxidation processes. These results offer a new perspective on hydrologically controlled biogeochemical transformation processes in riparian wetlands, which provides a dynamic framework to explain process heterogeneity in wetland soils and variability in process rates over space and time. Findings from this thesis clearly prove how useful interdisciplinary approaches are in understanding processes and mechanisms in ecosystems and how important functions of ecosystems are affected by couplings among those. However, a lot of knowledge gaps still exist in understanding the nature of dependency between water and nutrient cycles across scales and how these interacting cycles feed back into humanly-mediated climate change in ecosystems. Development of new interdisciplinary methodologies and frameworks as well as an integrated way of thinking across the boundaries of the different environmental disciplines is necessary to address the grand challenges associated with climate change