Welcome to the research unit CAOS
The overall objective of the research unit is to provide a new framework for building hydrological models that allows a much more realistic representation of the surface and especially subsurface architecture of catchments at the lower mesoscale (10–200 km²).
The key methodology is to combine:
- recent observation and exploration technology from soil physics, geophysics, remote sensing and (tracer) hydrology.
- our understanding of landscape formation and soil structure formation.
- physically based process models as learning tools to assess novel information on surface and subsurface structures as well as on distributed process dynamics.
From catchments as organised systems to models based on functional units
Key theoretical objective is to develop a model and mathematical framework that allows better integration of this information into the model identification process and thus faciitates communication between experimentalists and modellers. Research will be conducted in the hydrological observatory "Attert basin" in western Luxembourg that has been operated by the Gabriel Lippmann Research Institute (now Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology) since 2003 and is among the best investigated basins in the world.
For more information, read our project description.
The multi-disciplinary subprojects:
Previous phase of the research group
The fundament of the current project phase was established in the previous one. Here you can find an introduction to the main hypotheses and aspects in phase 1 of the project.