The artificial Hühnerwasser catchment has experienced a significant and monitored evolution since 2005, changing from a post-mining landscape to an almost fully vegetated ecosystem. The early stages showed a fast rate of ecohydrological evolution with changing dominating processes and feedbacks. The evolution of rill vegetation encroachment is one of such complex co-evolving processes.
We hypothesise that rill vegetation encroachment is driven by the evolution of the hydrologic/hydraulic regime of the rill network, which in turn affects the regime, potentially creating
a stabilising positive feedback. We further hypothesise that rill vegetation occurs later than hillslope vegetation, and follows a particular establishment and encroachment timeline in
response to the changing hydrological/hydraulic regimes. That is, the early runoff-dominated regime results in higher flows, velocities, transport and erosion capacity, thus favouring seed
flushing and seedling uprooting. On the other hand, as the system transitions from a runoffdominated into an infiltration- and ET-dominated system, flow, velocity, transport and erosion
capacity in the rill network are reduced, making seed establishment in the rills more likely. We explore these hypothesis with two complementary approaches: an analysis of the spatiotemporal distribution of vegetation and a process-based numerical modelling study. Firstly, we assess aerial photography of rill vegetation encroachment between 2007 and 2012 in terms of several vegetation types to derive temporal indicators of encroachment. The
analysis reveals that in the initial stages, a rill network developed in the hillslope. Shortly after vegetation first established on hillslopes, the rill network became progressively vegetated. Different pioneering species established heterogeneously, at different times and encroached into the rills at different rates. However, despite the volume of data, it is difficult to assess
which are the governing and limiting processes which respectively drive and constrain how and at which rate vegetation encroaches into the rills. In consequence, a pilot modelling study to identify the relative relevance of rill network geometry, bare soil infiltration, hillslope vegetation heterogeneity and intra-storm variability on the hydraulic response of the rill network and its possible impact on encroachment. The overall results suggest that vegetation
encroachment may be controlled by the rill network hydraulic regime, but such regime is the result of a complex superposition of responses of all the aforementioned factors, of which rill geometry appears to be a dominant one. Furthermore, the simulations showed
that vegetation spatial heterogeneity has an impact on the hydraulic regime coupled to the presence of temporal rainfall variability. Altogether, these results show that the governing coevolving
ecohydrological processes are interacting and are strongly affected by spatial and temporal heterogeneities.
The artificial catchment “Hühnerwasser” was built in a post-mining landscape, as a field experiment to observe and monitor early-development ecosystems at hillslope scale. Early on, rain-induced rill and channels formation was observed, followed by vegetation growth in between rills, and later on inside the rills.
In this work, we aim to describe the temporal evolution of the spatial distribution of rill vegetation. In general terms, we hypothesize four different encroachment patterns might occur: (1) The vegetation spreads from the top of the rills downstream. The underlying hypothesis would be a higher establishment probability due to a lower velocity of surface runoff and therefore less transport probability compared to downstream rill segments. (2)
The vegetation starts growing downstream and moves upwards. In this case we can hypothesize that the spatial distribution of the vegetation is dominated by water availability, which is higher or more stable downstream. (3) The vegetation encroaches from the sides into the rills, meaning that inter-rill vegetation governs vegetation encroachment inside the rills. (4) If no patterns are detected it might mean that the encroachment process depends
strongly on very local conditions, or perhaps that the underlying assumption of an initially homogeneous seed distribution is false.
To investigate the rills formation and rill vegetation encroachment processes, rills and vegetation patches inside these rills were identified and digitized from aerial photographs of the catchment from 2007 to 2012. Different vegetation types were identified based on the colour and texture of the patches. The geometrical properties of the rill segments and vegetation patches were used to define how the different vegetation types have distributed in space and how this distribution has changed over time. Rill mapping reveals a large increase of rill area from 2007 to 2008 and only a small rise from 2008 to 2009. Starting in 2010 dense vegetation prevents a precise mapping of the rills in the aerial photographs, so we assume that there is no change in rill area from 2009 to 2012. In 2007 vegetation covered only 1.4% of the rill area. There is only a small increase of this area in 2008 compared to the later years. In 2012 more than 50% of the rill area is covered by plants. Ten different vegetation types have been identified in the aerial photographs, starting with two types in 2007. By 2012 nine types are spotted in
the rills of the catchment. Some of these vegetation types show an encroachment from up- to downstream (e.g. Tussilago farfara), some from down- to upstream like Phragmites australis, whose creeping rhizomes can also promote such spreading. Others reveal no patterns. To better assess and identify the underlying processes leading
to these encroachment processes shown by the different vegetation types further data analysis –e.g. comparison with ground based vegetation mapping– and process-based hydrological modelling is necessary to fully explain these observations and assessing additional competition effects, which may be at play.
The Hühnerwasser catchment is a monitored, early-development constructed catchment within the Lower Lausatia post-mining landscape in Germany. Observations have shown that a sequence of landscape-forming processes occurred, including the initial vegetation establishment stages, which are the main interest of this study. In the initial stages of geomorphic development a surface drainage network of rills was formed as vegetation started to
appear on the hillslopes and subsequently inside the rill network. Observations and analysis of the rill vegetation establishment suggest that different vegetation types encroach into the rill network at different times, rates and form different directions. We hypothesize that these encroachment processes may respond to the runoff properties of the catchment at such time: velocity distribution in the rills might play a significant role in flushing seeds in high-velocity reaches of the rill network, thus favouring the appearance of vegetation in low-velocity regions.
Consequently, the goal of this study is to assess the magnitudes and spatiotemporal behaviour of velocity in the rill network, to assess its possible impact on seed flushing and rill vegetation encroachment. One rill subcatchment of Hühnerwasser was selected to perform an explorative study of rill hydrodynamics and their impact on vegetation establishment. Two vegetation states were simulated: bare hillslopes and vegetated hillslopes. The vegetated cover polygons were obtained from digitized aerial photography, and stochastically dissagregated 10-minute resolution precipitation data were used, selecting events with early, middle and late peak
storm intensities. A 2D explicit finite volume scheme solving the Zero-Inertia approximation to the shallow water
equations was used to simulate surface flow in the subcatchment.
The preliminary modelling results suggest that that there is no clear overall velocity gradient in the downstream
direction along the rills. In fact, velocity in the rills may increase or decrease along the rill following local topography and rill geometry. Consequently, no global trend for the probability of seeds being transported can be established. The results also shows that varying rainfall intensity and rainfall intrastorm distribution –in the absence of hillslope vegetation– does not affect the rill locations of maximum velocities, but mostly affect the magnitude of velocity. In the presence of hillslope vegetation –and thus heterogeneous infiltration conditions in the hillslopes– the spatial distribution of velocity is strongly affected, and can be in fact governed not by topography or rill geometry, but by the spatial heterogeneity of infiltration capacity. Furthermore, the time at which maximum discharge and velocities occur may not match that of maximum intensity. That is, emerging temporal dynamics arise due to the introduction of spatial heterogeneity, which also manifests in the fact that outflow from the subcatchment exhibits a intensity-thresholded behaviour.