Drought in the Anthropocene

Loon, Anne F. Van; Gleeson, Tom; Clark, Julian; Dijk, Albert I. J. M. van; Stahl, Kerstin; Hannaford, Jamie; Baldassarre, Giuliano Di; Teuling, Adriaan J.; Tallaksen, Lena M.; Uijlenhoet, R.; Hannah, David M.; Sheffield, Justin; Svoboda, Mark D.; Verbeiren, Boud; Wagener, Thorsten; Rangecroft, Sally; Wanders, Niko; Lanen, H.A.J. van

doi:10.1038/ngeo2646

Cited by 659 publications

(457 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Finally, in this study we screened our observational wells to keep minimal human influence on groundwater levels, but we note that anthropogenic changes in land use and water use in most of the world today are contributing to the discrepancy between the SPI and SGI. This human influence can and should not be disregarded by only using the SPI to characterize hydrological drought, because it creates a false image of the drought situation on the ground and its impact on people (Van Loon et al, 2016).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiscale evaluation of the Standardized Precipitation Index as a groundwater drought indicator

Kumar

Musuuza

Loon

et al. 2016

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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177

174

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Abstract. The lack of comprehensive groundwater observations at regional and global scales has promoted the use of alternative proxies and indices to quantify and predict groundwater droughts. Among them, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is commonly used to characterize droughts in different compartments of the hydro-meteorological system. In this study, we explore the suitability of the SPI to characterize local-and regional-scale groundwater droughts using observations at more than 2000 groundwater wells in geologically different areas in Germany and the Netherlands. A multiscale evaluation of the SPI is performed using the station data and their corresponding 0.5 • gridded estimates to analyze the local and regional behavior of groundwater droughts, respectively. The standardized anomalies in the groundwater heads (SGI) were correlated against SPIs obtained using different accumulation periods. The accumulation periods to achieve maximum correlation exhibited high spatial variability (ranges 3-36 months) at both scales, leading to the conclusion that an a priori selection of the accumulation period (for computing the SPI) would result in inadequate characterization of groundwater droughts. The application of the uniform accumulation periods over the entire domain significantly reduced the correlation between the SPI and SGI (≈ 21-66 %), indicating the limited applicability of the SPI as a proxy for groundwater droughts even at long accumulation times. Furthermore, the low scores of the hit rate (0.3-0.6) and a high false alarm ratio (0.4-0.7) at the majority of the wells and grid cells demonstrated the low reliability of groundwater drought predictions using the SPI. The findings of this study highlight the pitfalls of using the SPI as a groundwater drought indicator at both local and regional scales, and stress the need for more groundwater observations and accounting for regional hydrogeological characteristics in groundwater drought monitoring.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiscale evaluation of the Standardized Precipitation Index as a groundwater drought indicator

Kumar

Musuuza

Loon

et al. 2016

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

Self Cite

177

174

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“…Understanding the availability of water is important for domestic, agricultural, and industrial consumers, including hydropower (Van Vliet et al, 2012) and inland navigation, and to design infrastructure to reduce the risk of flooding and drought (Van Loon et al, 2016) in a changing climate. Models are needed to provide quantitative projections of how water resources will be affected by climate change.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping (dis)agreement in hydrologic projections

Melsen

Addor

Mizukami

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Hydrologic projections are of vital socioeconomic importance. However, they are also prone to uncertainty. In order to establish a meaningful range of storylines to support water managers in decision making, we need to reveal the relevant sources of uncertainty. Here, we systematically and extensively investigate uncertainty in hydrologic projections for 605 basins throughout the contiguous US. We show that in the majority of the basins, the sign of change in average annual runoff and discharge timing for the period 2070-2100 compared to 1985-2008 differs among combinations of climate models, hydrologic models, and parameters. Mapping the results revealed that different sources of uncertainty dominate in different regions. Hydrologic model induced uncertainty in the sign of change in mean runoff was related to snow processes and aridity, whereas uncertainty in both mean runoff and discharge timing induced by the climate models was related to disagreement among the models regarding the change in precipitation. Overall, disagreement on the sign of change was more widespread for the mean runoff than for the discharge timing. The results demonstrate the need to define a wide range of quantitative hydrologic storylines, including parameter, hydrologic model, and climate model forcing uncertainty, to support water resource planning.

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“…Even in California, which has one of the most highly engineered and intensively managed water systems in the U.S., water rights in some areas represent 1000% of the surface water supply (Grantham and Viers, 2014;Jenkins et al, 2004). Recent pronounced droughts highlight the added complexity of management under climate change interacting with human-imposed water stress, particularly in arid regions with high rates of wetland conversion (Maggioni, 2015;Van Loon et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three decades of Landsat-derived spring surface water dynamics in an agricultural wetland mosaic; Implications for migratory shorebirds

Schaffer‐Smith

Swenson

Barbaree

et al. 2017

Remote Sensing of Environment

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Satellite measurements of surface water offer promise for understanding wetland habitat availability at broad spatial and temporal scales; reliable habitat is crucial for the persistence of migratory shorebirds that depend on wetland networks. We analyzed water extent dynamics within wetland habitats at a globally important shorebird stopover site for a 1983-2015 Landsat time series, and evaluated the effect of climate on water extent. A range of methods can detect open water from imagery, including supervised classification approaches and thresholds for spectral bands and indices. Thresholds provide a time advantage; however, there is no universally superior index, nor single best threshold for all instances. We used random forest to model the presence or absence of water from >6200 reference pixels, and derived an optimal water probability threshold for our study area using receiver operating characteristic curves. An optimized mid-infrared (1.5-1.7 μm) threshold identified open water in the Sacramento Valley of California at 30-m resolution with an average of 90% producer's accuracy, comparable to approaches that require more intensive user input. SLC-off Landsat 7 imagery was integrated by applying a customized interpolation that mapped water in missing data gaps with 99% user's accuracy. On average we detected open water on ~26000 ha (~3% of the study area) in early April at the peak of shorebird migration, while water extent increased five-fold after the migration rush. Over the last three decades, late March water extent declined by ~1300 ha per year, primarily due to changes in the extent and timing of agricultural flood-irrigation. Water within shorebird habitats was significantly associated with an index of water availability at the peak of migration. Our approach can be used to optimize thresholds for time series analysis and near-real-time mapping in other regions, and requires only marginally more time than generating a confusion matrix.

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Drought in the Anthropocene

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Cited by 659 publications

References 11 publications

Multiscale evaluation of the Standardized Precipitation Index as a groundwater drought indicator

Multiscale evaluation of the Standardized Precipitation Index as a groundwater drought indicator

Mapping (dis)agreement in hydrologic projections

Three decades of Landsat-derived spring surface water dynamics in an agricultural wetland mosaic; Implications for migratory shorebirds

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