Education

• 10/2014 – 01/2018 | Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Munich | Master’s Thesis: Hydraulic Investigation of a flood polder intake structure with OpenFOAM | Study Project: Benchmarking of a 2D Shallow Water Equation Model for Urban Flooding
• 08/2016 – 12/2016 | Semester abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark, DTU Kopenhagen
• 10/2011 – 09/2014 | Bachelor studies of Environmental Engineering, TU Munich | Bachelor Thesis: Modelling the spring flow of a karstic spring in north Jordan

Research Experience

• Since 2021 | PhD Student at the Chair of Hydrology and River Basin Management, Technical University of Munich | Projects: FURIFLOOD, UAWOS
• 2018 – 2021 | Research assistant at the Chair of Hydrology and River Basin Management, Technical University of Munich | Projects: ProNaHo, KNU Donau, WaterD2D

Publications

Journal Publications

• Janzen, S., Balzer, J., Merk, F., Eberle, C., Chabi, C., Walz., Y. (2024). “Moving towards a comprehensive evaluation of ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction: The example of agroforestry for flood risk reduction”. Nature-Based Solutions, Volume 5, 2024, 100104, ISSN 2772-4115. doi.org/10.1016/j.nbsj.2023.100104.
• Schaffhauser, T., Tuo, Y., Hofmeister F., Chiogna, G., Huang, J., Merk, F. & Markus Disse. 2024. “SWAT-GL: A New Glacier Routine For the Hydrological Model SWAT”. JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association 00 (0): 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.13199.
• Merk, F., Schaffhauser, T., Anwar, F., Tuo, Y., Cohard, J.-M., and Disse, M.: The Significance of the Leaf-Area-Index on the Evapotranspiration Estimation in SWAT-T for Characteristic Land Cover Types of Western Africa, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss. [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2024-131, in review, 2024.

Conference Contributions

• Merk, F., Jalan, I., Disse, M. (2022): Gegenwärtige und zukünftige Hochwasserrisiken in urbanen und ländlichen Regionen in West Afrika. In: Tag der Hydrologie 2022 Programmbuch
• Merk, F., Disse, M., Cohard, J.M. & Mamadou, O. (2022): Evaluation of Data-Driven Estimates of Evapotranspiration for Physically-Based Water Balance Assessment in a West African Region. In: AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, vol. 2022, pp. H25R–1320.
• Merk, F., Schaffhauser, T., Anwar, F., Cohard, J.M., Tuo, Y. & Disse, M. (2023): A modelling framework based on evapotranspiration and plant growth for a robust water balance assessment in a sub-tropical and data-scarce region in West Africa. In: 2023 Aarhus, Denmark SWAT Conference Book of Abstracts.
• Merk, F., Schaffhauser, T., Anwar, F., Cohard, J.M. & Disse, M. (2023): Simple ET methods are sufficient when detailed LAI modelling is applied: benchmark testing the SWAT-T model with eddy covariance data in Western Africa. In: AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, vol. 2023, pp H33H-1890.