Partner 6: WU

Wageningen University (WU) is an international centre of education and research in agricultural and environmental sciences. The university is part of ‘Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR)’, which includes several scientific and technological institutes. Wageningen has earned an excellent reputation during many years of experience with international co-operation projects in Europe and all over the world.

The Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group (chaired by Prof. Remko Uijlenhoet) is part of the Department of Environmental Sciences and focuses on fundamental research on hydrological processes at various scales. In the group extensive knowledge in hydrogeology, catchment hydrology, surface water hydrology, hydrometeorology and water resources management goes along with extensive experience in modelling (incl. groundwater and rainfall-runoff modelling), monitoring and data processing. Advanced knowledge on both floods and droughts is present. Research of the group is to a large extent incorporated in the Wageningen Institute for Environmental and Climate Research (WIMEK-SENSE).

The Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group (link) has contributed substantially to the large-scale experiments of EFEDA-Spain and HAPEX-SAHEL. Within the EU-Climate Programme a project on Spatial Variability of Land Surface Processes was carried out. Recently, the group has been involved in the EC projects ‘Assessment of the regional impact of droughts in Europe (ARIDE)’, ‘Data assimilation within a unifying modelling framework for improved river basin water resources management (DAUFIN)’ and ‘Analysis, Synthesis and Transfer of Knowledge and Tools on Hydrological Droughts Assessment through a European Network (ASTHyDA)’ within the EC programmes ‘Climate and Environment’ and ‘Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development’. The group is currently involved in the FP6-IPs FLOODsite, HYDRATE and WATCH .

Remko Uijlenhoet. Graduated in 1990 from Wageningen University with an MSc degree in Hydrology and Water Resources. In 1999 he obtained his PhD degree from the same university for a PhD thesis entitled "Parameterization of Rainfall Microstructure for Radar Meteorology and Hydrology". From 1997 to 1999 he was a Marie Curie Fellow at the Laboratoire d'Etude des Transferts en Hydrologie et Environnement (LTHE) in Grenoble, France. From 2000 to 2001 he was a Research Associate in the Water Resources Program at Princeton University, USA. In 2001 he received a 5-year grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in the framework of the Innovational Research Incentives Scheme (Vernieuwingsimpuls), which has allowed him to set up a research team in Hydrometeorology, within the Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group at Wageningen University. In 2006 he became an Associate Professor and in 2007 he was appointed Full Professor and Chair Holder of Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management at Wageningen University. His main research topics are (1) the measurement and parameterization of the space-time variability of rainfall using ground-based remote sensing techniques and (2) the development of conceptual and physically-based models to study the hydrological impact of the space-time variability of rainfall. Remko Uijlenhoet is actively involved in preparing the Dutch ground validation effort for the planned NASA/ESA/JAXA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission at the Cabauw Experimental Site for Atmospheric Research (CESAR). Since 2004 he has been an Associate Editor for Water Resources Research and a Member of the Editorial Board of Advances in Water Resources.

Selected Publications
2008.    Talebi, A., P. A. Troch, and R. Uijlenhoet, 2008: A steady-state analytical slope stability model for complex hillslopes. Hydrological Processes, 22, 546-553.
2007.    Schuurmans, J. M., M. F. P. Bierkens, E. J. Pebesma, and R. Uijlenhoet, 2007: Automatic Prediction of High-Resolution Daily Rainfall Fields for Multiple Extents: The Potential of Operational Radar. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 8, 1204-1224.
2007.    Teuling, A., F. Hupet, R. Uijlenhoet, and P. A. Troch, 2007: Climate variability effects on spatial soil moisture dynamics. Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L06406.
2007.    Talebi, A., R. Uijlenhoet, and P.A. Troch, 2007: Soil moisture storage and hillslope stability. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 7, 523-534.
2007.    Leijnse, H., R. Uijlenhoet, and J.N.M. Stricker, 2007: Hydrometeorological application of a microwave link, Part II: Precipitation. Water Resour. Res., 43, W04417, doi:10.1029/2006WR004989.
2006.    Vulpiani, G., F.S. Marzano, V. Chandrasekar, A. Berne, and R. Uijlenhoet, 2006: Polarimetric weather radar retrieval of raindrop size distribution by means of a regularized artificial neural network. IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sensing, 44, 3262-3275,
2006.    Teuling, A.J., R. Uijlenhoet, F. Hupet, E.E. van Loon, and P.A. Troch, 2006: Estimating spatial mean root-zone soil moisture from point-scale observations. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 10, 755-767.
2006.    Uijlenhoet, R. and D. Sempere-Torres, 2006: Measurement and parameterization of rainfall microstructure. Journal of Hydrology, 328, 1-7.
2005.    Berne, A., R. Uijlenhoet, and P.A. Troch, 2005: Similarity analysis of subsurface flow response of hillslopes with complex geometry. Water Resour. Res., 41, W09410, doi:10.1029/2004WR003629.
2005.    Berne, A., M. ten Heggeler, R. Uijlenhoet, L. Delobbe, P. Dierickx, and M. de Wit, 2005: A preliminary investigation of radar rainfall estimation in the Ardennes region and a first hydrological application for the Ourthe catchment. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences J1 - NHESS, 5, 267-274.