heFFGL covers an area of 25 cm × 100 cm. In our case it isfilled with the forest floor, but it could contain variable fill-ings, depending on the application (e.g. plants or deadwood).The FFGL quantifies the main water fluxes of the FF: precip-itation (throughfall when beneath the canopy), evaporation(evapotranspiration in the case of ground vegetation), inter-ception of the FF (storage), and percolation to the mineralsoil (generally equivalent to infiltration into the soil)

The manufac-turing price of our FFGL is currently USD 750, with thestainless-steel container accounting for USD 550 of this cost.Utilizing an alternative material for the container could sig-nificantly reduce costs.

ello and Van Rensburg (2017)built a lysimeter for USD 520, and Dong and Hansen (2023)built a lysimeter station including four separate lysimetersfor USD 1310

ello and Van Rensburg (2017) con-ducted a review of small lysimeter costs, which ranged fromUSD 1000 to USD 55

Figure 2. (a) Lysimeter container on the frame. (b) Fully installed FFGL aligned with the location

Figure 1. Schematic drawing of the lysimeter setup. (1) The container and (2) the frame holding the load cells and (a) tipping buckets. (3)The customized microcontroller board.

Eberswalde

The lysimeter balance scales are located in the cellar,where seepage water also is recorded.The investigations focus on the determination of thewater budget components, evaporation, transpiration andseepage, under defined weather and soil conditions fordifferent types of vegetation.The quantity of seepage water found under conditionsof low regional precipitation was of particular interest be-cause only this component of precipitation, which flowsinto the groundwater, is of hydrological use.In addition to quantifying seepage water, lysimeters arean excellent means for determining plant evaporation (ET).Evaporation is the remainder after subtracting the seepage(S) and the change in soil moisture (dM) from precipitation(P) in the hydrologic equation ().ET = P – S – dM ()