Research

LOC3G project seeks to advance the knowledge of multiscale and multiphysics localization phenomena in porous geological media, with the aim of creating new predictive models for geophysics, geohazards, and geoengineering. The consortium combines a diverse array of expertise, including geological surveys, constitutive modeling and numerical simulations, laboratory tests, and real-world applications such as CO2 storage and geo-resource/energy exploitation. The project will incorporate innovative research techniques and utilize advanced constitutive models and next-generation numerical approaches to investigate the localization of deformation in geological media. The ultimate goal is to provide cutting-edge knowledge and interdisciplinary training to improve the capacity for research and technology globally, and to provide practitioners with the tools they require to tackle relevant problems in their fields. Additionally, LOC3G is expected to have a significant impact on addressing EU energy crisis caused by geopolitical issues.

The objectives for this expedition are focusing on a better scientific understanding of Lake Altaussee, Austria through its cultural, geological, and ecological significance. The priority was to obtain a multi-beam sonar map of Lake Altaussee and a sub-bottom profiling of the lake bed. Biologists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, California, and from the Paul Ricard Oceanographic Institute (France) collected samples from all water-entry points and from the lake surface area. At the deepest part of the lake (74.2 m), a Deep Trekker remotely operated vehicle (ROV) provided an important view of a geological occurrence: images of colored sediment and rock suggested the presence of iron ore. The Team also collected water, sediment, snow and air samples destined to be tested for microfibers, with the goal being to understand the dynamics of these fibers and eventually, by collecting and analyzing two juvenile fish and a dozen copepods, determine if they enter the local food web.

Due to the accelerating hydro-climatic extreme events, there is high demand on adjusting water resources management so that water quantity and quality are secured through a combination of different techniques integrating land-use, surface water, groundwater, and ecosystem management. The Project Interlayer focuses on how water retention technologies can contribute to improve resilience, adaptation and mitigation to hydroclimatic extreme events while increasing water availability and quality by balancing groundwater and surface water management practices. It is related to shared interdisciplinary knowledge in the complex interlink of flood protection, safeguarding water availability and quality to mitigate and adapt to hydroclimatic extreme events. Interlayer will develop and demonstrate novel water retention technologies that favor slow hydrology entrance in the system for adaptation of European river basins to hydro-climatic extreme events and simultaneously obtain resilience in agricultural productive land, the adjacent ecosystems, and downstream cities. Farmland can stay productive despite hydro-climatic extreme events through smart water harvesting methods, adapted soil and cropping management, improved ecosystem management, temperature buffering by means of appropriate riparian vegetation management and establishment of adequate refugia system for biodiversity (including definition of appropriate protected pools). Risk of urban flooding is reduced by parking of water not only in the river valleys upstream from the city, but also in the highlands of the catchments, reducing runoff from uphill as part of the water harvesting to address drought. Hydro-climatic water balance models will be demonstrated to describe the exchange of water within the river basins between highland and lowland and between shallow and deep groundwater, in response to suggested changes in land-use management.