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Hydrological drought events have very different causes and effects. Classifying these events into distinct types can be useful for both science and management. We propose a hydrological drought typology that is based on governing drought propagation processes derived from catchment-scale drought analysis. In this typology six hydrological drought types are distinguished, i.e. (i) classical rainfall deficit drought, (ii) rain-to-snow-season drought, (iii) wet-to-dry-season drought, (iv) cold snow season drought, (v) warm snow season drought, and (vi) composite drought. The processes underlying these drought types are the result of the interplay of temperature and precipitation at catchment scale in different seasons. As a test case, about 125 groundwater droughts and 210 discharge droughts in five contrasting headwater catchments in Europe have been classified. The most common drought type in all catchments was the classical rainfall deficit drought (almost 50% of all events), but in the selected catchments these were mostly minor events. If only the five most severe drought events of each catchment are considered, a shift towards more rain-to-snow-season droughts, warm snow season droughts, and composite droughts was found. The occurrence of hydrological drought types is determined by climate and catchment characteristics. The drought typology is transferable to other catchments, including outside Europe, because it is generic and based upon processes that occur around the world. A general framework is proposed to identify drought type occurrence in relation to climate and catchment characteristics.

The humanitarian crises caused by the recent droughts (2008–2009 and 2010–2011) in East Africa have illustrated that the ability to make accurate drought forecasts with sufficient lead time is essential. The use of dynamical model precipitation forecasts in combination with drought indices, such as the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), can potentially lead to a better description of drought duration, magnitude and spatial extent. This study evaluates the use of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) products in forecasting droughts in East Africa. ECMWF seasonal precipitation shows significant skill for March–May and October–December rain seasons when evaluated against measurements from the available in situ stations from East Africa. The forecast for October–December rain season has higher skill than for the March–May season. ECMWF forecasts add value to the consensus forecasts produced during the Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum (GHACOF), which is the present operational product for precipitation forecast over East Africa. Complementing the original ECMWF precipitation forecasts with SPI provides additional information on the spatial extent and intensity of the drought event.

Reducing the water footprint (WF) of the process of growing irrigated crops is an indispensable element in water management, particularly in water-scarce areas. To achieve this, information on marginal cost curves (MCCs) that rank management packages according to their cost-effectiveness to reduce the WF need to support the decision making. MCCs enable the estimation of the cost associated with a certain WF reduction target, e.g. towards a given WF permit (expressed in m3  ha−1 per season) or to a certain WF benchmark (expressed in m3  t−1 of crop). This paper aims to develop MCCs for WF reduction for a range of selected cases. AquaCrop, a soil-water-balance and crop-growth model, is used to estimate the effect of different management packages on evapotranspiration and crop yield and thus the WF of crop production. A management package is defined as a specific combination of management practices: irrigation technique (furrow, sprinkler, drip or subsurface drip); irrigation strategy (full or deficit irrigation); and mulching practice (no, organic or synthetic mulching). The annual average cost for each management package is estimated as the annualized capital cost plus the annual costs of maintenance and operations (i.e. costs of water, energy and labour). Different cases are considered, including three crops (maize, tomato and potato); four types of environment (humid in UK, sub-humid in Italy, semi-arid in Spain and arid in Israel); three hydrologic years (wet, normal and dry years) and three soil types (loam, silty clay loam and sandy loam). For each crop, alternative WF reduction pathways were developed, after which the most cost-effective pathway was selected to develop the MCC for WF reduction. When aiming at WF reduction one can best improve the irrigation strategy first, next the mulching practice and finally the irrigation technique. Moving from a full to deficit irrigation strategy is found to be a no-regret measure: it reduces the WF by reducing water consumption at negligible yield reduction while reducing the cost for irrigation water and the associated costs for energy and labour. Next, moving from no to organic mulching has a high cost-effectiveness, reducing the WF significantly at low cost. Finally, changing from sprinkler or furrow to drip or subsurface drip irrigation reduces the WF, but at a significant cost.

Liquid and solid precipitation is abundant in the high elevation, upper reach of the Heihe River basin in northwestern China. The development of modern irrigation schemes in the middle reach of the basin is taking up an increasing share of fresh water resources, endangering the oasis and traditional irrigation systems in the lower reach. In this study, the response of vegetation in the Ejina Oasis in the lower reach of the Heihe River to the water yield of the upper catchment was analyzed by time series analysis of monthly observations of precipitation in the upper and lower catchment, river streamflow downstream of the modern irrigation schemes and satellite observations of vegetation index. Firstly, remotely sensed NDVI data acquired by Terra-MODIS are used to monitor the vegetation dynamic for a seven years period between 2000 and 2006. Due to cloud-contamination, atmospheric influence and different solar and viewing angles, however, the quality and consistence of time series of remotely sensed NDVI data are degraded. A Fourier Transform method – the Harmonic Analysis of Time Series (HANTS) algorithm – is used to reconstruct cloud- and noise-free NDVI time series data from the Terra-MODIS NDVI dataset. Modification is made on HANTS by adding additional parameters to deal with large data gaps in yearly time series in combination with a Temporal-Similarity-Statistics (TSS) method developed in this study to seek for initial values for the large gap periods. Secondly, the same Fourier Transform method is used to model time series of the vegetation phenology. The reconstructed cloud-free NDVI time series data are used to study the relationship between the water availability (i.e. the local precipitation and upstream water yield) and the evolution of vegetation conditions in Ejina Oasis from 2000 to 2006. Anomalies in precipitation, streamflow, and vegetation index are detected by comparing each year with the average year. The results showed that: the previous year total runoff had a significant relationship with the vegetation growth in Ejina Oasis and that anomalies in the spring monthly runoff of the Heihe River influenced the phenology of vegetation in the entire oasis. Warmer climate expressed by the degree-days showed positive influence on the vegetation phenology in particular during drier years. The time of maximum green-up is uniform throughout the oasis during wetter years, but showed a clear S-N gradient (downstream) during drier years.

Ecohydrological models are powerful tools to quantify the effects that independent fluxes may have on catchment storage dynamics. Here, we adapted the tracer-aided ecohydrological model, EcH2O-iso, for cold regions with the explicit conceptualisation of dynamic soil freeze-thaw processes. We tested the model at the data-rich Krycklan site in northern Sweden with multi-criteria calibration using discharge, stream isotopes and soil moisture in 3 nested catchments. We utilized the model’s incorporation of ecohydrological partitioning to evaluate the effect of soil frost on evaporation and transpiration water ages, and thereby the age of source waters. The simulation of stream discharge, isotopes, and soil moisture variability captured the seasonal dynamics at all three stream sites and both soil sites, with notable reductions in discharge and soil moisture during the winter months due to the development of the frost front. Stream isotope simulations reproduced the response to the isotopically-depleted pulse of spring snowmelt. The soil frost dynamics adequately captured the spatial differences in the freezing-front throughout the winter period, despite no direct calibration of soil frost to measured soil temperature. The simulated soil frost indicated a maximum freeze-depth of 0.25 m below forest vegetation. Water ages of evaporation and transpiration reflect the influence of snowmelt-inputs, with a high proclivity of old water (pre-winter storage) at the beginning of the growing season and a mix of snowmelt and precipitation (young water) toward the end of the summer. Soil frost had an early season influence of the transpiration water ages, with water pre-dating the snowpack mainly sustaining vegetation at the start of the growing season. Given the long-term expected change in the energy-balance of northern climates, the approach presented provides a framework for quantifying the interactions of ecohydrological fluxes and waters stored in the soil and understanding how these may be impacted in future.

This study aims to compare impacts of climate change on streamflow in four large representative African river basins: the Niger, the Upper Blue Nile, the Oubangui and the Limpopo. We set up the eco-hydrological model SWIM (Soil and Water Integrated Model) for all four basins individually. The validation of the models for four basins shows results from adequate to very good, depending on the quality and availability of input and calibration data. For the climate impact assessment, we drive the model with outputs of five bias corrected Earth system models of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) for the representative concentration pathways (RCPs) 2.6 and 8.5. This climate input is put into the context of climate trends of the whole African continent and compared to a CMIP5 ensemble of 19 models in order to test their representativeness. Subsequently, we compare the trends in mean discharges, seasonality and hydrological extremes in the 21st century. The uncertainty of results for all basins is high. Still, climate change impact is clearly visible for mean discharges but also for extremes in high and low flows. The uncertainty of the projections is the lowest in the Upper Blue Nile, where an increase in streamflow is most likely. In the Niger and the Limpopo basins, the magnitude of trends in both directions is high and has a wide range of uncertainty. In the Oubangui, impacts are the least significant. Our results confirm partly the findings of previous continental impact analyses for Africa. However, contradictory to these studies we find a tendency for increased streamflows in three of the four basins (not for the Oubangui). Guided by these results, we argue for attention to the possible risks of increasing high flows in the face of the dominant water scarcity in Africa. In conclusion, the study shows that impact intercomparisons have added value to the adaptation discussion and may be used for setting up adaptation plans in the context of a holistic approach.

Hydrologic climate change modelling is hampered by climate-dependent model parameterizations. To reduce this dependency, we extended the regional hydrologic modelling framework SIMGRO to host a two-way coupling between the soil moisture model MetaSWAP and the crop growth simulation model WOFOST, accounting for ecohydrologic feedbacks in terms of radiation fraction that reaches the soil, crop coefficient, interception fraction of rainfall, interception storage capacity, and root zone depth. Except for the last, these feedbacks are dependent on the leaf area index (LAI). The influence of regional groundwater on crop growth is included via a coupling to MODFLOW. Two versions of the MetaSWAP-WOFOST coupling were set up: one with exogenous vegetation parameters, the "static" model, and one with endogenous crop growth simulation, the "dynamic" model. Parameterization of the static and dynamic models ensured that for the current climate the simulated long-term averages of actual evapotranspiration are the same for both models. Simulations were made for two climate scenarios and two crops: grass and potato. In the dynamic model, higher temperatures in a warm year under the current climate resulted in accelerated crop development, and in the case of potato a shorter growing season, thus partly avoiding the late summer heat. The static model has a higher potential transpiration; depending on the available soil moisture, this translates to a higher actual transpiration. This difference between static and dynamic models is enlarged by climate change in combination with higher CO2 concentrations. Including the dynamic crop simulation gives for potato (and other annual arable land crops) systematically higher effects on the predicted recharge change due to climate change. Crop yields from soils with poor water retention capacities strongly depend on capillary rise if moisture supply from other sources is limited. Thus, including a crop simulation model in an integrated hydrologic simulation provides a valuable addition for hydrologic modelling as well as for crop modelling.

Runoff generation processes and pathways vary widely between catchments. Credible simulations of solute and pollutant transport in surface waters are dependent on models which facilitate appropriate, catchment-specific representations of perceptual models of the runoff generation process. Here, we present a flexible, semi-distributed landscape-scale rainfall-runoff modelling toolkit suitable for simulating a broad range of user-specified perceptual models of runoff generation and stream flow occurring in different climatic regions and landscape types. PERSiST (the Precipitation, Evapotranspiration and Runoff Simulator for Solute Transport) is designed for simulating present-day hydrology; projecting possible future effects of climate or land use change on runoff and catchment water storage; and generating hydrologic inputs for the Integrated Catchments (INCA) family of models. PERSiST has limited data requirements and is calibrated using observed time series of precipitation, air temperature and runoff at one or more points in a river network. Here, we apply PERSiST to the river Thames in the UK and describe a Monte Carlo tool for model calibration, sensitivity and uncertainty analysis.

Located in western Inner Mongolia, the Badain Jaran Desert is the second largest desert in China and consists of a regular series of stable megadunes, among which over 70 permanent lakes exist. The unexpected lakes in desert attracted research interests on exploring the hydrological process under this particular landscape; however, a very few literatures exist on the diurnal and spatial variation of the drying front in this area, which is the main issue in the desert hydrological process to characterize the movement of water in soil. In order to understand the drying front in the Badain Jaran Desert, a field campaign was conducted by the observations of soil physical parameters and micrometeorological parameters. With the field data, the performance of a vadose zone soil water balance model, the HYDRUS, was verified and calibrated. Then, the HYDRUS was used to produce the spatial and temporal information of coupled water, water vapour and heat transport in sand to characterize the variation pattern of the drying front before, during and after the rainfall. Finally, the deepest drying front was applied to determine the effective infiltration, which is defined as the amount of soil water captured by the sand beneath the deepest drying front by infiltrating water of an incident rainfall event.

In drought sensitive lowland catchments, ecohydrological feedbacks to climatic anomalies can give valuable insights into ecosystem functioning in the context of alarming climate change projections. However, the dynamic influences of vegetation on spatio-temporal processes in water cycling in the critical zone of catchments are not yet fully understood. We used stable isotopes to investigate the impacts of the 2018 drought on dominant soil-vegetation units of the mixed land-use Demnitzer Mill Creek (DMC, NE Germany) catchment (66 km²). The isotope sampling was carried out in conjunction with hydroclimatic, soil, groundwater, and vegetation monitoring. Drying soils, falling groundwater levels, cessation of stream flow and reduced crop yields demonstrated the failure of catchment water storage to support blue and green water fluxes. We further conducted monthly bulk soil water isotope sampling to assess the spatio-temporal dynamics of water soil storage under forest and grassland vegetation. Forest soils were drier than the grassland mainly due to higher interception and transpiration losses. However, the forest soils also had more freely draining shallow layers, and were dominated by rapid young (age  2 months), though the lack of deep percolation produced water ages ~ 1 year under forest. We found the displacement of any drought signal within the soil profile limited to the isotopic signatures and no displacement or memory effect in d-excess over the monthly time step, indicating rapid mixing of new rainfall. Our findings suggest that contrasting soil-vegetation assemblages communities have distinct impacts on ecohydrological partitioning and water ages in the sub surface. Such insights will be invaluable for developing sustainable land management strategies appropriate to water availability and build resilience to climate change.