Anatomy of the 2018 agricultural drought in The Netherlands using in situ soil moisture and satellite vegetation indices

Buitink, Joost; Swank, Anne M.; Ploeg, Martine van der; Smith, Naomi; Benninga, Harm-Jan F.; Bolt, Frank van der; Carranza, Coleen; Koren, Gerbrand; Velde, R. van der; Teuling, Adriaan J.

doi:10.5194/hess-2020-358

Cited by 14 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…In the DMC, this resulted in periods of low water storage in the upper Critical Zone driven by high atmospheric moisture demand given high energy inputs, increased air temperatures and reduced relative humidity. This was similar to impacts of other recent European droughts (Hanel et al, 2018), nearby observations in 2018 (Heinrich et al, 2019) and observations from agricultural land use elsewhere in the Northern European Plain (Buitink et al, 2020). The severity of impacts from the drought which started in 2018 on green water fluxes was evident in reduced crop yields (esp.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Modelling ecohydrological feedbacks in forest and grassland plots under a prolonged drought anomaly in Central Europe 2018–2020

Kleine

Tetzlaff

Smith

et al. 2021

Hydrological Processes

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Recent studies have highlighted the importance of understanding ecohydrological drought feedbacks to secure water resources under a changing climate and increasing anthropogenic impacts. In this study, we monitored and modelled feedbacks in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum to the European drought summer 2018 and the following 2 years. The physically based, isotope-aided model EcH 2 O-iso was applied to generic vegetation plots (forest and grassland) in the lowland, groundwaterdominated research catchment Demnitzer Millcreek (NE Germany; 66 km 2 ). We included, inter alia, soil water isotope data in the model calibration and quantified changing "blue" (groundwater recharge) and "green" (evapotranspiration) water fluxes and ages under each land use as the drought progressed. Novel plant xylem isotope data were excluded from calibration but were compared with simulated root uptake signatures in model validation. Results indicated inter-site differences in the dynamics of soil water storage and fluxes with contrasting water age both during the drought and the subsequent 2 years. Forest vegetation consistently showed a greater moisture stress, more rapid recovery and higher variability in root water uptake depths from a generally younger soil water storage. In contrast, the grassland site, which had more water-retentive soils, showed higher and older soil water storage and groundwater recharge fluxes. The damped storage and flux dynamics under grassland led to a slower return to younger water ages at depth. Such evidencebased and quantitative differences in ecohydrological feedbacks to drought stress in contrasting soil-vegetation units provide important insights into Critical Zone water cycling. This can help inform future progress in the monitoring, modelling and development of climate mitigation strategies in drought-sensitive lowlands.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Modelling ecohydrological feedbacks in forest and grassland plots under a prolonged drought anomaly in Central Europe 2018–2020

Kleine

Tetzlaff

Smith

et al. 2021

Hydrological Processes

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“…The combination of high temperatures, low relative humidity, and reductions in soil moisture availability caused plants to close their stomata to conserve water. This led to reductions in evapotranspiration and also photosynthetic activity, thereby reducing carbon uptake from the atmosphere [3,4]. On the other hand, respiration of CO 2 is typically enhanced with higher temperatures, but during droughts respiration has been shown to decrease owing to a lack of available moisture limiting microbe activity [5,6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…photosynthetic activity, thereby reducing carbon uptake from the atmosphere[3,4]. On the other hand, respiration of CO 2 is typically enhanced with higher temperatures, but during droughts respiration has been shown to decrease owing to a lack of available moisture limiting microbe activity[5,6].…”

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confidence: 99%

Spring enhancement and summer reduction in carbon uptake during the 2018 drought in northwestern Europe

Smith

Kooijmans

Koren

et al. 2020

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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We analysed gross primary productivity (GPP), total ecosystem respiration (TER) and the resulting net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) by the terrestrial biosphere during the summer of 2018 through observed changes across the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) network, through biosphere and inverse modelling, and through remote sensing. Highly correlated yet independently-derived reductions in productivity from sun-induced fluorescence, vegetative near-infrared reflectance, and GPP simulated by the Simple Biosphere model version 4 (SiB4) suggest a 130–340 TgC GPP reduction in July–August–September (JAS) of 2018. This occurs over an area of 1.6 × 10 6 km 2 with anomalously low precipitation in northwestern and central Europe. In this drought-affected area, reduced GPP, TER, NEE and soil moisture at ICOS ecosystem sites are reproduced satisfactorily by the SiB4 model. We found that, in contrast to the preceding 5 years, low soil moisture is the main stress factor across the affected area. SiB4’s NEE reduction by 57 TgC for JAS coincides with anomalously high atmospheric CO 2 observations in 2018, and this is closely matched by the NEE anomaly derived by CarbonTracker Europe (52 to 83 TgC). Increased NEE during the spring (May–June) of 2018 (SiB4 −52 TgC; CTE −46 to −55 TgC) largely offset this loss, as ecosystems took advantage of favourable growth conditions. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Impacts of the 2018 severe drought and heatwave in Europe: from site to continental scale’.

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“…Peled et al, 2010;Mozny et al, 2012;Crow et al, 2012). Helped by the readily available satellite observations of vegetation indices like NDVI, EVI, SIF, fPAR, NIRv and VOD, other studies have been focusing on the use of these vegetation indices to quantify agricultural drought (Anyamba and Tucker, 2012;Hu et al, 2019;Buitink et al, 2020). Similarly, Narasimhan and Srinivasan (2005) developed two separate indices for agricultural drought monitoring: one focused on soil moisture, and the other on evapotranspiration.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ambiguous agricultural drought: characterising soil moisture and vegetation droughts in Europe from earth observation

Hateren

Chini

Matgen

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Abstract. Climate change will likely lead to more regular and more severe drought events in the near future, with large impacts on agriculture, especially during long-lasting precipitation deficits or heat waves. This study focuses on agricultural droughts, which are generally defined as soil moisture deficits so severe, that vegetation is negatively impacted. However, during short soil moisture drought events, vegetation is not always negatively affected, and sometimes even thrives under these conditions. Because of this duality in agricultural drought impacts, the use of the term agricultural droughts is ambiguous. Here we show that, in major European droughts over the past two decades, clear asynchronies and discrepancies occur between soil moisture and vegetation anomalies. A clear delay is visible between the onset of soil moisture drought and vegetation drought, and correlation between the two types of drought generally peaks at the end of the growing season. This behaviour seems to be different in droughts at lower latitudes, where correlations peak earlier in the season, likely due to water limited conditions occurring much earlier there. Moreover, results indicate that in some cases, vegetation can show a positive anomaly, even when soil moisture anomalies are negative. As a result, the use of the term agricultural drought could lead to misclassification of drought events and false drought alarms depending on whether vegetation or soil moisture is used to quantify the drought. We argue that it is necessary to make a distinction between soil moisture drought and anomalies in vegetation.

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Anatomy of the 2018 agricultural drought in The Netherlands using in situ soil moisture and satellite vegetation indices

Cited by 14 publications

References 52 publications

Modelling ecohydrological feedbacks in forest and grassland plots under a prolonged drought anomaly in Central Europe 2018–2020

Modelling ecohydrological feedbacks in forest and grassland plots under a prolonged drought anomaly in Central Europe 2018–2020

Spring enhancement and summer reduction in carbon uptake during the 2018 drought in northwestern Europe

Ambiguous agricultural drought: characterising soil moisture and vegetation droughts in Europe from earth observation

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