Integrated modeling of hydrological and agricultural aspects of droughts in Odra river basin under a changing climate

Extreme droughts are likely to become much more frequent across central Europe, and if global greenhouse gas emissions rise strongly, they could happen seven times more often (Ritchie and Roser, 2020). The area of crops likely to be affected by drought is also set to increase, and under sharply rising CO2 levels would nearly double in central Europe in the second half of this century, to more than 40 million hectares of farmland (FAO, 2017). Central Europe suffered its biggest and most damaging drought on record in 2018 and 2019, which had two of the three warmest summer periods ever recorded on the continent. The summers were also much drier than average, and more than half of the region suffered severe drought conditions. In particular, in Poland several extensive droughts have occurred in the last 30 years, e.g. in 1992, 2006, 2008 as well as more recently in 2015, 2018, and 2019.

The main objective of this research is to increase the understanding of the current and future agricultural and hydrological drought variability and the drought effect on crop losses in rain-fed agriculture in the Odra river basin (ORB). Three specific research questions are: (1) How are agricultural and hydrological drought characteristics changing in the context of current and future global climate change? (2) To what extent are model-based soil moisture (SM) deficit indices capable of explaining the variability of drought-related crop losses in rain-fed agricultural areas? (3) Can supplemental irrigation help to counteract future drought hazards in currently rain-fed agricultural areas and what are its hydrological consequences?

The two most important motivations of this research are (a) integrated analysis of different types of droughts have been rare to date, particularly under a changing climate and (b) the current global quest for sustainable intensification of agriculture, that can be well addressed by application of process-based modeling tools.