Lysimeters – separating processes in flux measurement, International Workshop, October 21st-23rd

Posted on 6. September 2015 by ugtgmbh

For registration please send an email to info-sued@ugt-online.de
With registration until October 9th, the fee is 150€ for full registration and 110€ for students. After October 9th the fee is 175€ for full registration and 135€ for students.
The workshop fee includes lunches, coffee and cake and the participation of the Bavarian evening.
In the week after the workshop we give the possibility for a lysimeter excursion with a visit of several lysimeter stations. If you are interested, please inform us with your registration.

Program:
October, 21st
09:00 -10:00 REGISTRATION
10:00 WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION, Sascha Reth, UGT, Germany
10:30 THE LYSIMETER RESEARCH GROUP – AN INTERNATIONAL NETWORK FOR LYSIMETER RESEARCH, Peter Cepuder, BOKU Vienna, Austria
11:15 LYSIMETER TECHNIQUE, OVERVIEW AND CASE STUDIES, Sascha Reth, UGT Freising, Germany
12:00 Lunch
13:00 DEMONSTRATION OF UNDISTURBED EXCAVATION OF MONOLITHS
14:30 VISIT OF A PE-HD LYSIMETER STATION, INSTRUMENTATION FOR DIFFERENT RESEARCH

15:15 DATA SERVICE AND VISUALIZATION- LYSIDATA & SVADSS, Dirk Römermann, LYSIDATA & SVADSS Munich, Germany

16:00 New lysimeter stations in Slovakia – a good opportunity for the development of research, Ivan Matusek, Kreaprojekt, Hrčková Katarína, PPRC Piešťany, Slovakia
16:30 LYSIMETER EXPERIMENTS AT KARCAG RESEARCH INSTITUTE, HUNGARY, Jozsef Zsembeli, Uni Debrecen, Hungary
17:00 REMEDIATION OF INDUSTRIAL SOILS – A LYSIMETER RESEARCH,
Frederic Rees, GISFI, France
20:00 Bavarian Evening

October, 22nd
09:00 INFLUENCE ON THE CONTROL OF THE LOWER BOUNDARY – TENSION AND TEMPERATURE, Ulrich Weller, UGT Müncheberg, Germany
09:30 POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITATIONS OF THE SIMULATION OF WATER BALANCE COMPONENTS AT SHALLOW GROUNDWATER SITES WITH LYSIMETERS, Ottfried Dietrich, ZALF Müncheberg, Germany
10:00 NITROGEN LEACHING AND FLUXES IN LYSIMETERS, Steffi Knoblauch, TLL Jena, Germany
10:30 Coffee break
11:00 THE IDIV ECOTRON – A FACILITY FOR BIODIVERSITY-ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONING RESEARCH UNDER CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS, Manfred Türke, iDiv Leipzig, Germany
11:30 EVAPORATIVE FLUX PARTITIONING IN A TREE-GRASS ECOSYSTEM USING EDDY COVARIANCE, SAP FLOW AND LYSIMETER TECHNIQUES, Oscar Perez-Priego, MPI Jena, Germany
12:00 Lunch
13:00 KROOF-PROJECT-KRANZBERG FOREST RESEARCH PLOT, Karl-Heinz Häberle, TUM Freising, Germany
14:30 SAP FLOW AND WATER POTENTIAL OF PLANTS, Christian Heerdt, UGT Freising, Germany
15:00 HEAT RATIO METHOD FOR SAP FLOW MEASUREMENTS, Martina Zacios, LWF Freising, Germany
15:30 THE DETERMINATION OF DRY STRESS EFFECTS ON THE WATER CONSUMPTION AND THE GROWTH OF TREES WITH THE USE OF LYSIMETER, Jürgen Müller, vTi Eberswalde, Germany
16:00 PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATION OF SAP FLOW SENSORS AND STEM PSYCHROMETERS

October, 23rd
09:00 INTRODUCTION OF GAS AND WATER ANALYZERS, Renato Winkler, Picarro Geneva, Switzerland

10:00 TRACE GAS EMISSIONS FROM MANAGED PEAT LAND, Martina Schlaipfer, HSWT Freising, Germany
10:30 STUDY OF STABLE ISOTOPES IN SOIL WATER, Paul Königer, BGR Hannover, Germany
11:00 Coffee break
11:30 PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATION OF PICARRO ANALYZERS

UGT at AOGS in Singapore

Posted on 4. August 2015 by ugtgmbh

From the 2^nd of August to the 7^th of August Singapore hosts the 12^th annual meeting of AOGS.
Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) was established in 2003 to promote geosciences and its application for the benefit of humanity. More than 1800 participants and research fellows from all over the world have arrived to exchange opinion in the field of soil and hydrology under the aspect of geoscience.

Dr. Sascha Reth holds an oral presentation with the title:
“Influence of a tension controlled lower boundary in lysimetres (HS02-D5-PM1-312-013)”

It was a plesure to have this talk with a lot of interested listeners. Questions like:

how to measure exactly the evapotranspiration, or
what is the influence of the temperature control, or
to manage the lysimeter together with other measurement instruments, like gas analyzers and sap flow?

encourated us to further develope and investigate these topics.

At booth E04 Sascha Reth and Kerstin Thomsen show the equipment of UGT and give evidence of the wide ranging product groups of UGT. Already at the first day our booth was a centre of interst for the visitors. Also other Asian partners of UGT like from Vietnam and Malaysia make use of the chance to come and see UGT in Singapore.

The AOGS 2015 was a very successful event for UGT. Thanks to the organizers, thanks to Singapore and happy 50th anniversary!

Invitation to Workshop at UGT 21.-23. October 2015

Posted on 14. July 2015 by ugtgmbh

“Lysimeters – separating processes in flux measurement”
UGT Branch South, Lise-Meitner-Str. 30, 85354 Freising-Weihenstephan/ Germany

Ejkelkamp Practice Day at UGT on the 9th of June in Freising and on the 11th of June in Müncheberg

Posted on 12. June 2015 by ugtgmbh

„presentation of equipment: soil sampling, soil moisture, soil compaction, infiltration and sediment samples”
Dr. Sascha Reth opened the work shop in Freising and Müncheberg and we were glade to welcome our experienced course leader Cor Verbruggen from the Ejkelkamp Academy. Cor showed to our customers the numerous forms of application of the wide range equipment of Ejkelkamp. Cor was supported by the UGT field seller Markus Reissig who has experience for more than a decade in the field of Ejkelkamp products.

We had more than 20 participants at each UGT place and our customers appreciated highly the very practical seminar. A short necessary amount of theory and than everybody started working, digging, taking samples nearly “undisturbed” and disturbed ones.

From the famous “Edelmann” driller to the split tube sampler. Heavy technique like the “percussion coring tube” demanded muscle power in the team. Beside of the knowledge and exchange of experience joy and fun facilitated the joint work.
This course was combined with information concerning the UGT technology and there was interesting ways that showed how to combine UGT-technology with Ejkelkamp-technology.

A good match, Katja Weber, scientist in the field of hydrology accompanied the participants and even new product ideas emerged out of the exchange of experience.
Kerstin Thomsen, strategic sales Manager from UGT had the chance to talk to the customers about new projects.
Last but not least the UGT teams in Freising and Müncheberg were very good hosts and provided for our customers a nice meal from the field kitchen. Our internal customer service in Müncheberg and Freising, Jeannine, Nancy, Jenny and Stefanie took very good care for the wellbeing of our customers – thanks to the Team!
Thanks to the participants – please join us soon again! Thanks to our lecturers – we are looking forward to have you soon here again!
Service is our top target and we will keep up with the development in all fields and we invite you dear customers to join us – learn more about the equipment – and to have a good time with us.
Yours’ UGT-team in Freising and Müncheberg

Project MANIP / Spain: First Results of the Comparison between Lysimeter, Eddy Covariance and Sapflow data

Posted on 22. May 2015 by ugtgmbh

Here we present some preliminary results of water fluxes acquired with weighing lysimeters and sap flow sensors in a tree-grass ecosystem in Majadas (Spain).

Tree-grass” ecosystems. Mixed tree-grass systems are widely distributed (~16-35% of global land-surface) vegetation formations such as tropical and Mediterranean savannas, the “waldsteppe” in Eurasia and culturally influenced vegetation types such as agro-forestry systems or grazed open-forests in Europe (Hanan & Hill 2011). Semi-arid tree-grass systems are considered one of the major contributors to the interannual variability of the global carbon cycle (Poulter et al., 2014).Despite their wide distribution, Earth observation systems, and associated land-surface modeling development have been so far poorly adapted to the key structural and functional characteristics of tree-grass ecosystems. As consequence a significant uncertainty and bias in the assessments of energy, carbon, water and biogeochemical dynamics is often observed (Hanan & Hill 2011; Beringer et al. 2011). Nutrient (N, P) imbalance. Human induced CO2 and N fertilization leads to a stoichiometric imbalance, which confers an important role to P availability and leads to shifts in C-N-P ratios and balances (Peñuelas et al. 2012). N/P imbalances are particularly important in water-limited ecosystems (Sardans et al., 2012), where the synergistic effect of water and nutrient (N and P) availability/imbalance could impact ecosystem functioning, structure, allocation patterns and the nutrient and carbon cycling, and ultimately how the ecosystem will respond to extreme drought events. Hence it is important to study the effects of N and P imbalances under different water regimes, in particular in mixed tree-grass at ecosystem scale. MaNiP project offers an original experimental design integrating cutting-edge approaches (including eddy covariance, lysimiters and hyperspectral; remote sensing) to study the combined effect of nutrient and water limiting factors on fundamental ecosystem, plant and soil processes.
Soil variables (soil tension and volumetric soil water content; SWC) at different soil depths (line 10 cm and dashed line for 40 cm), and climatic variables ( daily Precipitation) are presented to describe the seasonal time course of daily evapotranspiration (ET) measured with the lysimeter. Data allow us to get more insight into non-well known processes that drive water flow upward and downward and determining water budgets in soils.

In the following plot, we show the agreement between the diurnal time course of ET aquired with two lisimeters and an eddy covariance tower. Sap velocity are also overlapped to investigate the contribution of the tree and grass transpiration on the ecosystem ET.

Thanks to the group of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Department Biogeochemical Integration for the first results in this study. The figures above show clearly that the methods match perfectly together!

Lysimeter inauguration – Project MANIP / Spain

Posted on 5. May 2015 by ugtgmbh

In April 2015 the official inauguration of the lysimeter station took place.

Key over with Dr. Mirco Migliavacca (Leader of the research group: Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions and Experimentation, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry) and Dr. Sascha Reth (managing director of UGT GmbH)
Project description by the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry “Tree-grass” ecosystems. Mixed tree-grass systems are widely distributed (~16-35% of global land-surface) vegetation formations such as tropical and Mediterranean savannas, the “waldsteppe” in Eurasia and culturally influenced vegetation types such as agro-forestry systems or grazed open-forests in Europe (Hanan & Hill 2011). Semi-arid tree-grass systems are considered one of the major contributors to the interannual variability of the global carbon cycle (Poulter et al., 2014) Despite their wide distribution, Earth observation systems, and associated land-surface modeling development have been so far poorly adapted to the key structural and functional characteristics of tree-grass ecosystems. As consequence a significant uncertainty and bias in the assessments of energy, carbon, water and biogeochemical dynamics is often observed (Hanan & Hill 2011; Beringer et al. 2011). Nutrient (N, P) imbalance. Human induced CO2 and N fertilization leads to a stoichiometric imbalance, which confers an important role to P availability and leads to shifts in C-N-P ratios and balances (Peñuelas et al. 2012). N/P imbalances are particularly important in water-limited ecosystems (Sardans et al., 2012), where the synergistic effect of water and nutrient (N and P) availability/imbalance could impact ecosystem functioning, structure, allocation patterns and the nutrient and carbon cycling, and ultimately how the ecosystem will respond to extreme drought events. Hence it is important to study the effects of N and P imbalances under different water regimes, in particular in mixed tree-grass at ecosystem scale. MaNiP project offers an original experimental design integrating cutting-edge approaches (including eddy covariance, lysimiters and hyperspectral; remote sensing) to study the combined effect of nutrient and water limiting factors on fundamental ecosystem, plant and soil processes.

UGT – „open house“ on 3rd of May in the margin of the local event „Kaiserbergfest“ in Müncheberg –

Posted on 4. May 2015 by ugtgmbh

Our products being shown at the EGU – European Geosciences Union General assembly 2015 in Vienna – now in Müncheberg – highly innovative products in the focus of our inhabitants of Müncheberg!
The first weekend in May, Müncheberg celebrated the 5^th public fair “Kaiserbergfest” which attracted people with games, fun and entertainment.
As a local company of Müncheberg UGT used the opportunity to show our company and our products to the people of Müncheberg.
About 100 inhabitants of Müncheberg made use of this opportunity and got a very warm welcome in our Company.

Presentation about the history of UGT GmbH

We showed our products in the field of environmental monitoring from the lysimeter to the weather station. Our hosts – the Managing Director, sales department, scientists and our experienced work team were happy to answer the questions of our guests concerning the various products as well as development and future challenges of the company.

Live demonstration of lysimeter excavation technology

At the EGU in Vienna the company displayed a 2-fold lysimeter station, a top product the UGT is leading in the world marked with – the people of Müncheberg had the chance to see this product and to get informed about the latest scientific research programmes with this station.

Walk-in lysimeter station by UGT GmbH

History, now-adays challenges and future of the company – many inhabitants of Müncheberg are bound and interested in environmental technology for many years and hence were very interested listeners.

UGT managing director Bernd Fürst

A joint breakfast offered the opportunity to get in personal talks – during the guided tours through the factory – young and old visitors where enthusiastic to discuss what in more than 20 years of development has been achieved in UGT.
“We would like to come again next year”, this was the comment of many people from Müncheberg! This is also a challenge for the staff of UGT to present new and interesting solutions again next year.
Magnificent sunshine in Müncheberg at the open area of UGT and an intersting part of the public event of the “Kaiserbergfest” where local economy fitted well in the activities of this day of entertainment and joy for the city of Müncheberg.
Kerstin Thomsen

Chinese Delegation in Freising at UGT GmbH

Posted on 24. April 2015 by ugtgmbh

April, 23rd a Chinese delegation visited the Branch South of UGT in Freising. Beside the broad range of soil physical instruments, the lysimeter solution of UGT aroused great interest. The lysimeter as a tool for environmental observation –including soil, water, plants and the atmospheric boundary layer- is the solution for the future.

Lysimeters on tour – part 2

Posted on 21. April 2015 by ugtgmbh

Together with the Lysimeter Conference in Gumpenstein 2015, a meeting of the international steering committee of the Lysimeter Research Group took place. Dr. Sascha Reth (managing director of UGT) – as a member of the steering committee – was delighted by the work in the last year. A highlight was the lysimeter excursion in the fall 2014. See the report under following link:
Lysimeter_Excursion_2014
The positive feedback on the UGT installations of lysimeters in Borovce, Tatranská Javorina and Michalovce, all in Slovak Republic was given in the group.

At the conference itself we have present our PE-HD lysimeter station in front of the conference building. The participants got the chance to visit the station and discuss the need for their projects.

Lysimeters on tour – visit us at the EGU 2015 in Vienna

Posted on 15. April 2015 by ugtgmbh

Take the great opportunity to visit UGT at the EGU. We are happy to show you the latest developments at our booth No.53. Here you will see the new Full Range Tensiometer at work.

Measurement of the soil water matric potential (ψm) is important to characterize and monitor processes in vadose zone hydrology, such as plant growth, crop production, aquifer recharge and leaching below buried waste disposal sites. Tensiometers are widely used instruments for monitoring and have been used for almost 100 years already. Unfortunately, water-filled tensiometers are only able to measure (ψm ) up to approximately – 90kPa. Soil physical experimental research is hampered by this very limited measurement range. The Full Range Tensiometer is comparable to water-filled tensiometers, but measures over a larger range. Hereby the Full Range Tensiometer measures the soil water potential directly.

Advantages

fast response to changes
higher measurement range than usual tensiometers
self refilling
direct pressure measurement

Available in 3 measurement ranges:

Full Range 5: pF 3.7 ( +50 to -500 kPa)
Full Range 15: pF 4.2 (+100 to -1500 kPa)
Full Range 25: pF 4.4 (+100 to -2500 kPa)

Outside the conference hall we have build up a real working lysimeter station. We are happy to explain you the world leading technique of the UGT lysimeters. Another good opportunity is to learn about the full range of lysimeter uses as the combination with Picarro analyzers – for water, gases and isotopic analyze– as well as plant related instruments from ICT International. With the instruments you enable the full information of the water flux and water potential in plants.

Further on the lysimeter range will be completed with a data management service of SVADSS to get always the best view on your data.

UGT blog news

Category Archives: Allgemein