Nives Balenovic, doctoral student from Croatia working in a cooperation project from IKT Petzenkirchen, BOKU Vienna and CTU Prague, started recently her PhD about 'Kinetic energy of rainfall as driving force of soil detachment and transport' (also known as splash erosion).

She is doing her field experiments in the HOAL catchment, where she installed so called splash cups for analysing the kinetic energy of rainfall. Due to the installations in the HOAL she can also take use of the data of the climate station and the present weather sensor, which is measuring raindrop and rainfall characteristics (size, velocity, distribution and intensity).

If heavy rainfall occurs it hits the soil in the soil cups and erodes the soil. The eroded soil is collected in the outer bucket and quantitative determined. Also the surface changes of the soil cups and the soil loss in the cups are analysed via photogrammetry.