My research

Aquifers and rivers in mountainous headwater catchments are important freshwater resources that sustain downstream baseflow in the densely populated lowlands of Switzerland as well as in many other parts of the world. It is of great importance to protect and sustainably manage these fragile hydro(geo)logic systems - particularly in the face of future environmental changes (e.g., climate change, land use change). Adaption methods to these changes can, however, only be successful when underpinned by a holistic understanding of the links and feedbacks between the different variables of the water cycle.
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As a researcher at ETH Zurich in the group of Physics of Environmental Systems, I address fundamental research questions within the field of catchment hydrology. My research integrates studies on both physical hydrogeology and hydrology at different spatio-temporal scales. I am particularly interested in

• Improving our understanding of the relationships between catchments’ landscape properties (e.g., geomorphology, climate, soils, vegetation), water storage dynamics and biogeochemical processes;
• Performing innovative field-based experiments to capture rapidly changing hydrological and chemical signatures in order to study catchment hydro(geo)logical processes and feedback mechanisms;
• Applying numerical hydrological models to investigate, how these feedbacks scale in space and time.

Most of my current research focusses on how forested, snow-dominated mountainous catchments store and release water and how this affects the hydro-chemical signature of the river water. 

I use a "lab in the field" for on-site analysis of water quality parameters and stable water isotopes at high temporal resolution.
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Together with a PhD student we aim at quantifying the contribution of seasonal snowmelt to groundwater recharge and river discharge to improve the hydrological prediction model PREVAH. Read more

Stable water isotopes in precipitation and stream water help me to estimate water ages to better understand the relationship between water storage dynamics and catchments’ landscape properties.
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Stable water isotopes are commonly used to identify the water sources of trees. However, tree roots may change the isotopic composition of soil water during water uptake. 
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News

• I visited Daniele Penna's group in Florence on December 8-12, 2019. I gave two seminars and visited their new field site, the Re della Pietra catchment - it was a lot of fun!
• Have a look at an interview I gave to the EGU Hydrology Division Blog about my research at the Rietholzbach catchment (May 2019)
• Our new HESS paper is online: Studying catchment storm response using event- and pre-event-water volumes as fractions of precipitation rather than discharge 
• Currently I'm a visiting researcher at the Dawson Lab at UC Berkeley, California. I'm working on isotopic fractionation effects in soils due to plant water uptake.
• Check out our Lab's Twitter account: Kirchner Lab ETH
• The Summer School on "Catchment Transport Processes" (2-7 July 2017, Einsiedeln, Switzerland) was a great success!
• Watch the rapid streamflow responses during a snowmelt event in February 2017 at the Erlenbach river - click here!

Last updated: 16 Dec 2019

Get involved!
The group Physics of Environmental System is offering Bachelors and Masters thesis projects in research topics focusing on catchment hydrology and hydrogeology, as well as on isotope hydrology and water quality.  Projects are available for highly motivated Bachelors and Masters students with strong backgrounds that span hydrology, civil engineering, geosciences, environmental sciences, or similar fields.  Projects can be based on existing data sets or field-work for data generation at our experimental sites (Erlenbach, Rietholzbach).  Please contact me (jana.vonfreyberg@usys.ethz.ch) with any questions.