**3. Potential of using controlled catchments in the study of water regime development at post-mining sites**

What has been mentioned above opens many potential hypotheses about the development of the water regime in post-mining soils. It seems that soil-water storage is closely linked with SOM storage. Similarly, as proposed by Cejpek et al. [39], plants with a fast-growing strategy, which tend to store more SOM in mineral soil [3, 6], also tend to produce soil aggregates with more bound OM [20] and, consequently, soils store more water [19, 22, 30, 39]. This concept opens many other questions, such as how these parameters relate to the water balance (e.g., to runoff and evapotranspiration), how historical changes in soil carbon storage and water retention affect subsequent ecosystem development, and many others. Answering these questions may be interesting not only for a better understanding of ecosystem development at post-mining sites but also may have more general implication. However, answering these questions faces also many methodical challenges. With common instrumentation we are not able to follow that part of the landscape with woody vegetation that would realistically allow the measurement of all the water movement, including surface and subsurface runoff. In order to answer these and other questions, we plan to build small hydrologically isolated micro-catchments on a heap (similar to rainy hill of Chicken creek catchments [42]) in a way that the installed devices allow comprehensive monitoring of the flow of water and nutrients through the ecosystem as well as the exchange of gases between the ecosystem and the surrounding atmosphere. In particular, we will measure the rain water input, including dry and wet deposition, surface and subsurface runoff, the content of key elements of the discharge, water movement in the soil profile, total radiation, carbon exchange (CO<sup>2</sup> ) between the atmosphere and the whole ecosystem, and also between soil and atmosphere. The area itself will be divided into four micro-catchments with an area of about 0.25 ha each, two of which will be planted with alder and the other two will be left uncultivated. For each pair of areas (reclaimed and uncultivated), one eddy covariance tower will be located in the direction of the predominant winds. The area will then be equipped with container lysimeters and access shafts allowing for the easy implementation of additional ad hoc experiments.

**2.3. Vegetation development and its role in the water regime**

vegetation season in mm or average stock in vegetation season/outside vegetation season.

With increasing succession age, plant cover increases. Dynamics of this increase may certainly vary between various types of vegetation. For example, Frouz et al. [40] investigating reclaimed alder plantations and unreclaimed post-mining sites, found that biomass of reclaimed sites

**Figure 3.** Monthly water budget of unreclaimed mean sites without any technical reclamation spontaneously covered by natural regrowth dominated by *Salix caprea* and *Betula pendula* (left) and reclaimed sites planted by alder (right) both sites about 30 years old, based on data from [39]. Data are monthly mean flows during vegetation season/outside

**Figure 2.** Water field capacity (WFC) of 30-year-old post-mining soils developing on the same clay soils under various

tree species in relation to soil carbon content in particular sites based on data from [3].

100 Hydrology of Artificial and Controlled Experiments

The main component of the entire experimental catchments will be the monitoring of the water flow. For separation of surface and subsurface runoff, the underground clay layers will be compacted at a depth of 2 m to create an impermeable layer. This impervious layer will lead into a collecting channel fitted with a specific overflow and a subsurface drainage monitoring device. Another specific collecting trough fitted with a further measuring overflow and measuring equipment will then be placed on the surface of the terrain. This will allow a separate observation of surface and subsurface runoff. The flow monitoring devices will also take samples of water to measure flows, which will then allow the calculation of the balance of substances moving with the water.

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The water input into the catchment area will be monitored by a set of rain gauges that will both monitor rainfall dynamics and capture rainwater for subsequent chemical analysis.

In addition to the water flow and gas exchange facilities, access shafts will be located in the catchment area. These are plastic shafts equipped with observation windows and preset points where additional accessories can be installed. This will allow the installation of any instrument to monitor the development of soil and nutrient flow during the operation of the experimental basin without the need for further disturbance, which is key to the function of the river basin. The area will also include container lysimeters to monitor soil development and to perform manipulation experiments. Those will be particularly valuable in an experiment aiming at upscaling processes from the soil aggregate level to the whole soil profile.

## **4. Conclusions**

Large-scale hydrological parameters that determine water movement in the landscape level can be tracked in small-scale processes on the level of individual aggregates or soil pores. This tracking indicates that both of these processes can be driven by growth strategy of plants. Experiments in controlled conditions where both macro- and microscopic processes can be studied in more details are needed for better understanding of these interactions.
