Description

The drought years 2018, 2019, and 2020 has led to damage for farmers in particular in the East of the Netherlands where soils are sandy and groundwater tables are deep. Brecklenkamp is a small old community in Twente located directly at the border with Germany. Two large commercial dairy farmers of this community requested Regional Water Authority Vechtstromen to install a series of weirs.

These weirs will enable to save the excess water from the wet winter for the dry summer, but the additional water may cause other parts in the area to remain longer wet during spring and thereby also causing damage.

The question is whether the planned weirs are sufficient to stop damages due to drought in the future and at the same not invoked other types of damages to the agricultural sector.

Objectives and Methodology

The main objective of this MSc research topic is to investigate the effectiveness of weirs as drought mitigation measure for the Brecklenkamp community. Through a combination of groundwater modelling and data analysis students analyze i) how effective the weirs are in mitigating impact of droughts and ii) what the collateral damage caused by the increased water tables is during for instance Springtime.

The focus for M-GEO students lies on finding answers to the above questions via modelling the effects of weir on the groundwater table and the soil moisture content in the unsaturated zone. Scenarios should be developed for different types meteorological circumstances.

M-SE students can address the research questions by contributing to the development of the monitoring network, analyzing its data and investigating perspectives on the drought problem and mitigation measure of the involved stakeholders (e.g. Regional Water Authority, commercial farmers, smallholder ‘hobby’ farmers, local residents).

Further reading