Efstathios Diamantopoulos

Department of Soil Physics

My research aims at the understanding and characterization of mass and energy fluxes in soils. In that context, I explore from the soil physics perspective, and always in collaboration with the fellow scientists, the non-linear feedbacks between plants, soil ecology, soil chemistry and soil hydrology. My scientific curiosity is focused on the understanding and the analysis between the discrepancy of theoretical predictions and actual observations (direct or indirect) in soils. To achieve this, I am combining:

• Multiscale experimental quantification of water flow, solute transport, and heat flow in soils at various spatial scales (pore, column, mesocosm, plot scale),
• Characterizing soil physical properties at the pore and at the continuum scale,
• Advanced numerical models for simulating water flow, solute transport and heat flow in soils including non-equilibrium phenomena (e.g., preferential flow),
• Multidisciplinary modeling tools describing the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum (Daisy, daisy.ku.dk)
• and state of the art inverse modelling methods. Moreover, I am using advanced techniques for the quantification of parameter and model prediction uncertainty. This includes classic and Bayesian methods.

Current projects/research: Transport of natural toxins in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum, reactive transport in soil, preferential transport of solutes in soils, coupled water and heat transport under bare soil evaporation