In Poland, recent summer droughts have had devastating environmental, social, and economic consequences, but the trend of growing season dryness remains unclear. This study focuses on the soil moisture and evaporative stress conditions, analyzed in a multiyear period between 1981 and 2019. Country scale trends in growing season drought severities are assessed using indices derived from the model-based estimates of soil moisture and evapotranspiration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe streamflow elasticity concept based on the Budyko framework is widely used in hydrological impact assessment studies. However, in landscapes transformed by human activities, identification of climate contributions to runoff change is difficult due to changing surface properties of river basins. Here, a method is proposed to quantify the effects of changing vegetation cover and included them in the calculus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFConsidering the growing recognition that human activity and climate variability are critical stressors influencing river regimes, there is an urgent need to identify the contribution of these fundamental factors. Here we examine the runoff changes of a wastewater-effluent dominated river flowing in a heavily modified urban environment. The study concerns the Utrata River basin (727 km), central Poland, a challenging human-natural system for investigating changes in hydrological processes.
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