Watershed Dynamics and Hydrological Extremes
Research Focus
In the WaterExtremes group we develop effective process-informed data-driven methods grounded in comprehensive perceptual representation of dominant hydrological dynamics and catchment organization to leverage the increasing sample sizes of hydrometeorological observations from small- to mesoscales. With these methods we uncover regularities in complex hydrological systems to understand better the emergence of extremes and provide more reliable predictions at large scales.
Opportunities
The following Master thesis/Internships are currently available in the group:
- Drought and post-drought impacts on pollutant transport from catchments to streams (contact: Felipe Saavedra)
- Effect of extreme events on nutrient concentrations and ratios in the Elbe River catchment (contact: Felipe Saavedra)
Chahinaz Ziani
Doctoral researcher (DBU scholarholder)
Topic: Topographically-enhanced catchment descriptors for robust predictions of nutrient export patterns
Dr. Zhenyu Wang
Postdoctoral researcher
Topic: Event-type-based diagnostics of hydrological models and groundwater droughts
Dr. Adriane Hövel
Postdoctoral researcher (DFG project HydroSIGNS)
Topic: Functional resilience of hydrological systems to global change
Daniela Peña-Guerrero
Postdoctoral researcher (Helmholtz InnoPool EXTREME-ADAPT)
Topic: Drought impacts and adaptation potential
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Maysaa Abdelmajid
Doctoral researcher (PhD Cohort SEESAW)
Topic: Two poles of extremes - quantifying catchment susceptibility to rapid transitions between extremes
Nataly Foronda Ortega
Visiting Doctoral researcher from University of Sao Paulo (CAPES scholarholder)
Topic: The effect of forest management on hydrological processes at catchment scale
Former group members
- Felipe Saavedra, PhD researcher 2020-2025 "Effects of hydrological events on solute mobilization and delivery in German river catchments", now at the Group "Groundwater Systems", UFZ, Germany
- William Andres Baquero Cifuentes, Master student 2025 "2D continuous wavelets for quantifying structural similarity of hydrological catchments"
- Ying Zhang, Visiting Doctoral Researcher 2024-2025 "Forecasting widespread floods using deep learning", now doctoral researcher at Hohai University, Nanjing, China
- Jiarui Yu, Visiting Doctoral Researcher 2024-2025 "Damage footprint of different flood generation processes", now postdoctoral researcher at Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
- Dr. Hsing-Jui Wang, Postdoctoral Researcher 2024 "Emergence of unprecedented floods", now Assistant Professor at National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
- Chahinaz Ziani, Master student 2023-2024 "Development of topographically-enhanced catchment descriptors", now research assistant at TH Cologne, Germany
- Matteo Pesce, visiting PhD researcher from Polotecnico di Torino, Italy 2023 "Classification of river flood events in the North-East of Italy", now researcher at University of Padua, Italy
- Safae Aala, Master student 2022-2023 "The effect of space-time dynamics of precipitation on timing and shape of streamflow events", now at GIZ Agadir, Morocco
Uncovering generation processes of complex hazards using data evidences supported by simulations
- changes in flood generation processes
- archetypes of drought propagation through catchment compartments
- spatial extremes
- extreme transitions
- impact of extremes on nutrient mobilization
Improving process foundation of conceptual, statistical, machine and deep learning models for more reliable predictions under global change
- event-type-based diagnostics of hydrological models
- explainable AI
- sparse neural networks for S2S forecasting
- physically-enhanced statistical approaches for estimating extremes
Developing methods for representing structural and functional similarity of hydrological systems
- hydrological signatures
- functional resilience
- multi-scale catchment descriptors
- topographically-enhanced catchment descriptors
SEESAW
Societal and Environmental impacts of complex ExtremeS in a chAnging World
(UFZ PhD Cohort, 2025-2028)
EXTREME-ADAPT
Quantifying the effect of adaptation measures on spatiotemporal changes in flood and drought risk
(Helmholtz Innovation Pool, 2025-2027)
HydroSIGNS
Hydrometric and isotopic event SIGNatures to evaluate functional resilience of diverse hydrological Systemsto global change
(DFG Research Project, grant 564932275, 2026-2029)
PREDICTED
Propensity of rivers to extreme floods: climate-landscape controls and early detection
(DFG Research Project, grant 421396820, 2019-2022)
DYNAMO
Events as dynamic drivers of pollutant transport, turnover and export in catchments – from monitoring to models
Subproject 3: Effects of hydrological events on solute mobilization and delivery in German river catchments
(Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ PhD college, 2020-2023)
Index:
You could use our publication index for further requests.
2026 (2)
- Lei, C., Basso, S., Cohen, M.J., Musolff, A., Tarasova, L., Schmidt, C. (2026):
Discharge-based classifications of spatio-temporal patterns of potentially gaining and losing subcatchments in the Bode River catchment, Central Germany
J. Hydrol. Reg. Stud. 64 , art. 103161 10.1016/j.ejrh.2026.103161 - Peña-Guerrero, M.D., Senay, G.B., Umirbekov, A., Tarasova, L., Rufin, P., Pulatov, B., Müller, D. (2026):
Climate change has increased crop water consumption in Central Asia despite less water-intensive cropping
Commun. Earth Environ. 10.1038/s43247-025-03142-y
2025 (6)
- Aala, S., Kumar, R., Ribbe, L., Borchardt, D., Tarasova, L. (2025):
The effects of space-time dynamics of precipitation on the shape and timing of streamflow event hydrographs
Hydrol. Process. 39 (11), e70333 10.1002/hyp.70333 - Peña-Guerrero, M.D., Senay, G., Umirbekov, A., Tarasova, L., Rufin, P., Pulatov, B., Müller, D. (2025):
Long-Term Actual Evapotranspiration (ETa) Maps of Irrigated Croplands in the Amu Darya Basin (1987–2019) [Data set]
Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.17720311 - Saavedra, F., Vergopolan, N., Musolff, A., Merz, R., Wang, Z., Winter, C., Tarasova, L. (2025):
From soil moisture spatial patterns to catchment nitrate dynamics using explainable AI
Water Resour. Res. 61 (11), e2025WR040295 10.1029/2025WR040295 - Schubert, M., Saavedra Melendez, F., Lin, M., Terzer-Wassmuth, S., Hertle, L., Tegen, I., Knoeller, K., Schmidt, A. (2025):
Tackling voids in observations: An approach to reconstruct rainfall 35S timeseries from proxy parameters
ACS ES&T Wat. 5 (7), 4002 - 4012 10.1021/acsestwater.5c00250 - Tarasova, L., Aala, S. (2025):
Hourly streamflow events and their characteristics [Data set]
Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.14587215 - Wagner, P.D., Duethmann, D., Kiesel, J., Pool, S., Hrachowitz, M., Ceola, S., Herzog, A., Houska, T., Loritz, R., Spieler, D., Staudinger, M., Tarasova, L., Thober, S., Fohrer, N., Tetzlaff, D., Wagener, T., Guse, B. (2025):
The unexploited treasures of hydrological observations beyond streamflow for catchment modeling
Wiley Interdiscip. Rev.-Water 12 (2), e70018 10.1002/wat2.70018
2024 (8)
- Dolich, A., Acuña Espinoza, E., Ebeling, P., Guse, B., Götte, J., Hassler, S.K., Hauffe, C., Kiesel, J., Heidbüchel, I., Mälicke, M., Müller-Thomy, H., Stölzle, M., Tarasova, L., Loritz, R. (2024):
CAMELS-DE: hydrometeorological time series and attributes for 1582 catchments in Germany [Dataset]
Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.13837553 - Jiang, S., Tarasova, L., Yu, G., Zscheischler, J. (2024):
Compounding effects in flood drivers challenge estimates of extreme river floods
Sci. Adv. 10 (13), eadl4005 10.1126/sciadv.adl4005 - Loritz, R., Dolich, A., Acuña Espinoza, E., Ebeling, P., Guse, B., Götte, J., Hassler, S.K., Hauffe, C., Heidbüchel, I., Kiesel, J., Mälicke, M., Müller-Thomy, H., Stölzle, M., Tarasova, L. (2024):
CAMELS-DE: hydro-meteorological time series and attributes for 1582 catchments in Germany
Earth Syst. Sci. Data 16 (12), 5625 - 5642 10.5194/essd-16-5625-2024 - Musolff, A., Tarasova, L., Rinke, K., Ledesma, J.L.J. (2024):
Forest dieback alters nutrient pathways in a temperate headwater catchment
Hydrol. Process. 38 (10), e15308 10.1002/hyp.15308 - Pesce, M., Viglione, A., von Hardenberg, J., Tarasova, L., Basso, S., Merz, R., Parajka, J., Tong, R. (2024):
Regional multi-objective calibration for distributed hydrological modelling: a decision tree based approach
In: Cudennec, C., Grimaldi, S. (eds.)
Hydrological Sciences in the Anthropocene. Vol. 2: Variability and change across space, time, extremes, and interfaces - IAHS Scientific Assembly 2022, Montpellier, 29 May-3 June 2022
Proceedings of IAHS 385
International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS), Wallingford, Oxfordshire, 65 - 69 10.5194/piahs-385-65-2024 - Saavedra, F., Musolff, A., von Freyberg, J., Merz, R., Knöller, K., Müller, C., Brunner, M., Tarasova, L. (2024):
Winter post-droughts amplify extreme nitrate concentrations in German rivers
Environ. Res. Lett. 19 (2), art. 024007 10.1088/1748-9326/ad19ed - Tarasova, L., Ahrens, B., Hoff, A., Lall, U. (2024):
The value of large-scale climatic indices for monthly forecasting severity of widespread flooding using dilated convolutional neural networks
Earth Future 12 (2), e2023EF003680 10.1029/2023ef003680 - Tarasova, L., Gnann, S., Yang, S., Hartmann, A., Wagener, T. (2024):
Catchment characterization: Current descriptors, knowledge gaps and future opportunities
Earth-Sci. Rev. 252 , art. 104739 10.1016/j.earscirev.2024.104739
2023 (8)
- Basso, S., Merz, R., Tarasova, L., Miniussi, A. (2023):
Extreme flooding controlled by stream network organization and flow regime
Nat. Geosci. 16 (4), 339 - 343 10.1038/s41561-023-01155-w - Bieroza, M., Acharya, S., Benisch, J., ter Borg, R.N., Hallberg, L., Negri, C., Pruitt, A., Pucher, M., Saavedra, F., Staniszewska, K., van’t Veen, S.G.M., Vincent, A., Winter, C., Basu, N.B., Jarvie, H.P., Kirchner, J.W. (2023):
Advances in catchment science, hydrochemistry, and aquatic ecology enabled by high-frequency water quality measurements
Environ. Sci. Technol. 57 (12), 4701 - 4719 10.1021/acs.est.2c07798 - Mushtaq, S., Miniussi, A., Merz, R., Tarasova, L., Marra, F., Basso, S. (2023):
Prediction of extraordinarily high floods emerging from heterogeneous flow generation processes
Geophys. Res. Lett. 50 (20), e2023GL105429 10.1029/2023GL105429 - Tarasova, L. (2023):
Widespread flood severity index time series for Germany [Data set]
Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.7688006 - Tarasova, L., Lun, D., Merz, R., Blöschl, G., Basso, S., Bertola, M., Miniussi, A., Rakovec, O., Samaniego, L., Thober, S., Kumar, R. (2023):
Shifts in flood generation processes exacerbate regional flood anomalies in Europe
Commun. Earth Environ. 4 , art. 49 10.1038/s43247-023-00714-8 - Tarasova, L., Merz, R. (2023):
Großräumige Analyse von Abflussereignissen: Entstehungsprozesse und deren Effekt auf die räumliche und zeitliche Variabilität der Abflussdynamik – Large scale analysis of runoff events: generation processes and their effect on the spatio-temporal variability of runoff event dynamics
Hydrol. Wasserbewirtsch. 67 (5), 275 - 286 10.5675/HyWa_2023.5_4 - Wachholz, A., Dehaspe, J., Ebeling, P., Kumar, R., Musolff, A., Saavedra, F., Winter, C., Yang, S., Graeber, D. (2023):
Stoichiometry on the edge - humans induce strong imbalances of reactive C:N:P ratios in streams
Environ. Res. Lett. 18 (4), art. 044016 10.1088/1748-9326/acc3b1 - Wang, H.-J., Merz, R., Yang, S., Tarasova, L., Basso, S. (2023):
Emergence of heavy tails in streamflow distributions: the role of spatial rainfall variability
Adv. Water Resour. 171 , art. 104359 10.1016/j.advwatres.2022.104359
2022 (7)
- Giani, G., Tarasova, L., Woods, R.A., Rico-Ramirez, M.A. (2022):
An objective time-series-analysis method for rainfall-runoff event identification
Water Resour. Res. 58 (2), e2021WR031283 10.1029/2021WR031283 - Merz, R., Miniussi, A., Basso, S., Petersen, K.-J., Tarasova, L. (2022):
More complex is not necessarily better in large-scale hydrological modelling: A model complexity experiment across the contiguous United States
Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. 103 (8), E1947 - E1967 10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0284.1 - Peña-Guerrero, M.D., Umirbekov, A., Tarasova, L., Müller, D. (2022):
Comparing the performance of high-resolution global precipitation products across topographic and climatic gradients of Central Asia
Int. J. Climatol. 42 (11), 5554 - 5569 10.1002/joc.7548 - Saavedra, F.A., Musolff, A., von Freyberg, J., Merz, R., Basso, S., Tarasova, L. (2022):
Disentangling scatter in long-term concentration–discharge relationships: the role of event types
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 26 (23), 6227 - 6245 10.5194/hess-26-6227-2022 - Tarasova, L. (2022):
Processed data: flood generation processes and flood anomalies [Data set]
Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.6403851 - Tarasova, L. (2022):
Code: flood generation processes and flood anomalies
Version: 1 Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.6403860 - Winter, C., Tarasova, L., Lutz, S.R., Musolff, A., Kumar, R., Fleckenstein, J.H. (2022):
Explaining the variability in high-frequency nitrate export patterns using long-term hydrological event classification
Water Resour. Res. 58 (1), e2021WR030938 10.1029/2021WR030938
2021 (1)
- Basso, S., Ghazanchaei, Z., Tarasova, L. (2021):
Characterizing hydrograph recessions from satellite-derived soil moisture
Sci. Total Environ. 756 , art. 143469 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143469
2020 (4)
- Merz, R., Tarasova, L., Basso, S. (2020):
The flood cooking book: ingredients and regional flavors of floods across Germany
Environ. Res. Lett. 15 (11), art. 114024 10.1088/1748-9326/abb9dd - Merz, R., Tarasova, L., Basso, S. (2020):
Parameter's controls of distributed catchment models—How much information is in conventional catchment descriptors?
Water Resour. Res. 56 (2), e2019WR026008 10.1029/2019WR026008 - Tarasova, L., Basso, S., Merz, R. (2020):
Transformation of generation processes from small runoff events to large floods
Geophys. Res. Lett. 47 (22), e2020GL090547 10.1029/2020GL090547 - Tarasova, L., Basso, S., Wendi, D., Viglione, A., Kumar, R., Merz, R. (2020):
A process‐based framework to characterize and classify runoff events – the event typology of Germany
Water Resour. Res. 56 (5), e2019WR026951 10.1029/2019WR026951
2019 (1)
- Tarasova, L., Merz, R., Kiss, A., Basso, S., Blöschl, G., Merz, B., Viglione, A., Plötner, S., Guse, B., Schumann, A., Fischer, S., Ahrens, B., Anwar, F., Bárdossy, A., Bühler, P., Haberlandt, U., Kreibich, H., Krug, A., Lun, D., Müller‐Thomy, H., Pidoto, R., Primo, C., Seidel, J., Vorogushyn, S., Wietzke, L. (2019):
Causative classification of river flood events
Wiley Interdiscip. Rev.-Water 6 (4), e1353 10.1002/wat2.1353
2018 (3)
- Müller, C., Musolff, A., Strachauer, U., Brauns, M., Tarasova, L., Merz, R., Knöller, K. (2018):
Tomography of anthropogenic nitrate contribution along a mesoscale river
Sci. Total Environ. 615 , 773 - 783 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.09.297 - Tarasova, L., Basso, S., Poncelet, C., Merz, R. (2018):
Exploring controls on rainfall‐runoff events: 2. Regional patterns and spatial controls of event characteristics in Germany
Water Resour. Res. 54 (10), 7688 - 7710 10.1029/2018WR022588 - Tarasova, L., Basso, S., Zink, M., Merz, R. (2018):
Exploring controls on rainfall‐runoff events: 1. Time series‐based event separation and temporal dynamics of event runoff response in Germany
Water Resour. Res. 54 (10), 7711 - 7732 10.1029/2018WR022587
2016 (1)
- Tarasova, L., Knoche, M., Dietrich, J., Merz, R. (2016):
Effects of input discretization, model complexity, and calibration strategy on model performance in a data-scarce glacierized catchment in Central Asia
Water Resour. Res. 52 (6), 4674 - 4699 10.1002/2015WR018551