Complex interactions of climate, landscape structure and agricultural management with pedological and hydrological processes present a challenge for predicting nutrient and contamination transport at the landscape scale. 

Vadose zone processes control the flow of water, nutrients, and contaminants out of the active root zone to the aquatic environment. Understanding the processes is thus a prerequisite for sustainable land and water management. Our research addresses heterogeneous transport processes of nutrients or pesticides either in dissolved or colloidal form from point to landscape scale. Specifically, we investigate leaching through tile drain systems that are common on farmland in Denmark.  

End-of-pipe solutions such as constructed wetlands and compact filter systems can be adopted by farmers or environmental authorities to reduce phosphorus and nitrogen losses from agricultural fields to the aquatic environment mainly through the tile drains. Here we study the effectiveness of different system designs as well as their placement in the landscape for cost-effective mitigation.