Denise Müller

From 1st September to 24th October 2014, I conducted my research stay at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Brussels, Belgium, in the working group of Prof. Pierre Regnier. His department is concerned with the biogeochemical modeling of the earth system. My research stay was supervised by Dr. Ronny Lauerwald, who is a postdoctoral researcher at Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL), France, and a guest researcher at ULB himself. He is currently integrating CO2 outgassing from rivers into the global land surface model ORCHIDEE. In the first two years of my PhD, I had primarily conducted field work and determined greenhouse gas emissions from rivers in Malaysia. During my research stay, I wanted to look at this work from a modeler's perspective and apply ORCHIDEE to my study region.

Not only did my research stay allow me to temporarily live in the capital of the European Union, it actually gave me the chance to immerse myself into the whole new world of modeling. In the absence of everyday distractions, I look back at two months of hard and productive work. I ran ORCHIDEE simulations for both Malaysia and Indonesia, thereby already broadening my perspective to the regional scale.

My supervisor Dr. Lauerwald gave me helpful insights into a modeler's work and a good idea of what the aim of modeling actually is, and what it isn't. Looking back, I can say that I acquired a basic understanding of modeling and got a sneak peek of the work and all the considerations behind the development of a model. I gained a new perspective on my work in Malaysia and learned to see it within the bigger picture. The work at ULB also helped me to understand what modelers are concerned with, and which challenges they face when they try to validate their models with field data. This basic understanding of their requirements is definitely beneficial with regards to planning future field campaigns. I would like to thank GLOMAR for funding my research stay and thereby allowing me to seize this opportunity.