Description: Erosion can be observed in many arable soil landscapes such as those of the hummocky ground moraine. The topsoil removal by water erosion in combination with tillage operations (e.g., ploughing) is leading to truncated soil profiles along slopes with reduced solum thickness and modified properties of soil horizons. The objectives were to identify and quantify effects of erosion-induced soil modifications on the water balance and the leaching of dissolved organic and inorganic carbon (DOC, DIC), considering complex soil-crop interactions. The idea was to compare lysimeter-based water and solute balances of eroded Luvisols that differed in solum depth. The six high precision weighing lysimeters (1.0 m2 surface, 1.5 m high; UMS Science-Lysimeter) had a resolution of 10 g (=0.01 mm). The cylindrical steel rings of the lysimeters were filled with undisturbed soil monoliths from two fields. Lysimeter soils were cultivated with maize, winter rye, Sudangrass, triticale, alfalfa, and Persian clover during the observation period April 2011 to March 2014. Cumulative drainage of the six lysimeter soils ranged from 57 for the least to 104 mm y−1 for the most eroded Luvisols; the differences of about 83% indicated that the erosional profile modifications in combination with differences in crop development affected the water balance components. Soil-crop interactions depending on properties of differently-truncated soil profiles caused varying amounts of precipitation and evapotranspiration for the 3-years. Since lysimeter effluent concentrations of DOC (5 ± 0.5 mg L−1) and DIC (62 ± 5 mg L−1) were relatively constant in time, the DOC and DIC leaching was mainly controlled by the water fluxes. Thus, the leaching rates ranged from 0.3 (Luvisol) to 0.5 g m−2 yr−1 (eroded Luvisol) for DOC and 3.3 (Luvisol) to 7.1 g m−2 yr−1 (eroded Luvisol) for DIC. Because of the complex soil crop interactions, a clear relation between erosion-induced soil profile modification and the water balance and DOC and DIC leaching could not be identified. Nevertheless, when transferring lysimeter results to the arable soil landscape the erosion-induced modifications even within the same pedogenetic soil type should be considered.

Description: The aim of TERENO (TERrestrial ENvironmental Observatories) is to collect long-term observation data on the hydrosphere, biosphere, pedosphere, lower atmosphere and anthroposphere along multiple spatial and temporal gradients in climate sensitive regions across Germany. The lysimeter-network SOILCan was installed as a part of TERENO between March and December 2010 within the four observatories. It represents a long-term large-scale experiment to study the effects of climate and management changes in terrestrial ecosystems, with particular focus on the impact of these changes on water, energy and matter fluxes into groundwater and atmosphere. SOILCan primarily focuses on soil hydrology, the carbon and nutrient cycle and plant species diversity. Time series measurements of states and fluxes at high spatial and temporal resolution in the soil and biosphere are combined with remote sensing information for the development and calibration of process-based models simulating impacts of climate change in soil processes at field to regional scale. Within the framework of SOILCan, 132 fully automated lysimeter systems were installed at 14 highly equipped experimental field sites across the four TERENO observatories. Relevant state variables of grassland and arable ecosystems are monitored characterizing climate, hydrology and matter fluxes into the atmosphere and within the hydrosphere as well as plant species diversity. Lysimeters are either being operated at or near their original sampling location or were transferred within or between the four TERENO observatories thereby using temperature and rainfall gradients to mimic future climatic conditions (space for time), which allow measuring impacts of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems. The lysimeters are cultivated as grassland (intensive, extensive and non-used) or arable land, the latter with a standardized crop rotation of winter wheat—winter barley—winter rye—oat. This publication describes the general design of the SOILCan experiment including a comprehensive description of the pedological characteristics of the different sites and presents a few exemplary results from the first years of operation.

Description: The Northeast German Lowland Observatory (TERENO‐NE) was established to investigate the regional impact of climate and land use change. TERENO‐NE focuses on the Northeast German lowlands, for which a high vulnerability has been determined due to increasing temperatures and decreasing amounts of precipitation projected for the coming decades. To facilitate in‐depth evaluations of the effects of climate and land use changes and to separate the effects of natural and anthropogenic drivers in the region, six sites were chosen for comprehensive monitoring. In addition, at selected sites, geoarchives were used to substantially extend the instrumental records back in time. It is this combination of diverse disciplines working across different time scales that makes the observatory TERENO‐NE a unique observation platform. We provide information about the general characteristics of the observatory and its six monitoring sites and present examples of interdisciplinary research activities at some of these sites. We also illustrate how monitoring improves process understanding, how remote sensing techniques are fine‐tuned by the most comprehensive ground‐truthing site DEMMIN, how soil erosion dynamics have evolved, how greenhouse gas monitoring of rewetted peatlands can reveal unexpected mechanisms, and how proxy data provides a long‐term perspective of current ongoing changes.