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Annual irrigation maps and frequency data for the Rhine basin derived from hydrological modeling and land surface temperature. Data underlying the research of: Identifying irrigated areas using land surface temperature and hydrological modelling: Application to Rhine basin

During the July 2021 European floods approximately 8 million pieces of plastic dairy packaging were flushed from a severely damaged dairy processing facility located at the Vesdre river in Belgium. Some of these dairy packaging 'buttertubs' were ultimately flushed into the Meuse river and counted on riverbanks along the Dutch Meuse between July 2021 and July 2023. In addition to recording when and where they were found, some were collected for analysis on their development of mass over the two years between July 2021 - July 2023. The article attached to this dataset is called "Flood-induced buttertub spill reveals riverine plastic transport dynamics" and has the DOI 10.1186/s12302-024-00962-1. Dataset 1 contains the locations where buttertubs were found over the two years, with the location coordinates and sampled area of riverbank. Dataset 2 contains the mass analysis of the collected buttertubs before and after they were cleaned and dried. Dataset 3 contains pictures of the buttertubs analyzed for their mass prior to cleaning.

This resourse contains some processing, analysis, and plotting codes as well as some intermediate data for plotting the figures which is linked to the manuscript titled with Increasing Soil moisture-Temperature Coupling Increases Population Exposure to Future Heatwaves. The csv files contain the mean values of the four heatwave characteristics for both CTL and ExpA and both periods based on the two scenarios (SSP585 and SSP126) and those of population count for the two periods based on the two scenarios. Values for both present period (2000-2030) and future period (2040-2700) are included. Values for heatwave duration (HWD), heatwave magnitude (HWMt), heatwave amplitude (HWAt), and heatwave frequency (HWF) are included.

The new scientific decade (2023-2032) of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) aims at searching for sustainable solutions to undesired water conditions - may it be too little, too much or too polluted. Many of the current issues originate from global change, while solutions to problems must embrace local understanding and context. The decade will explore the current water crises by searching for actionable knowledge within three themes: global and local interactions, sustainable solutions and innovative cross-cutting methods. We capitalise on previous IAHS Scientific Decades shaping a trilogy; from Hydrological Predictions (PUB) to Change and Interdisciplinarity (Panta Rhei) to Solutions (HELPING). The vision is to solve fundamental water-related environmental and societal problems by engaging with other disciplines and local stakeholders. The decade endorses mutual learning and co-creation to progress towards UN sustainable development goals. Hence, HELPING is a vehicle for putting science in action, driven by scientists working on local hydrology in coordination with local, regional, and global processes.

Study regionUpper Ewaso Ng’iro catchment is located in Eastern Africa – a water-scarce region.Study focusStreamflow is in decline in the catchment despite the pattern of increasing amounts of rainfall in the East African region. This study explored historical human-water interplays to understand the coevolution of hydrological systems and societal development and to identify the dominant features contributing to water deficits and water-related conflicts in the lowland zone of the catchment. A socio-hydrological conceptual framework was used to mimic and explain the two-way coupling between human and hydrological systems.New hydrological insights for the regionThe results show that the dominant features that have likely contributed to changes in lowland streamflow and water-related conflicts include: population growth, land use/cover changes, and economic dynamics. The dry season flows have been extremely reduced with a 100% reduction observed in the month of February especially between 2010 and 2020 while the wet season flows have increased by about 10% and 15% in the upland and midland zones respectively. The decreasing trends in the streamflow against increasing amounts of rainfall emphasize the direct role humans have on catchment water availability. East Africa being a water-scarce region, there is a need to shift the focus from ‘the sustainable natural flows perspective’ to ‘the amount of water retained during wet seasons perspective’, improving land conservation activities to increase water infiltration during wet seasons, and the need to bring all stakeholders together for collective understanding.

As a reaction to ongoing environmental change, many local land restoration projects have emerged that aim to prevent or reverse land degradation, combat climate change through carbon sequestration or improve the local climate. However, the contribution of these projects to the greening of Africa at larger scales is still unknown due to the absence of a (public) complete database of land restoration projects, the lack of monitoring and the low survival rate of planted vegetation. Here, we use climate independent greening time series to detect local greening hotspots in Africa. We find that 2.1% of Africa, an area of roughly 400 000 km2, experiences local greening, especially in semi-arid environments. We show that various forms of sustainable land management (SLM) lead to significant local greening and demonstrate that some forms, e.g. active revegetation, are more effective than others, e.g. natural regeneration. This study, therefore, provides a first continental-scale insight in the greening potential of land restoration, which is needed for a thorough understanding of the effectiveness of SLM.

Scripts in the programming language R and accompanying datasets that are used for regression analysis in the study 'Evaporation from a large lowland reservoir – observed dynamics during a warm summer'. The analysis provides insight in which variables can explain open water evaporation of Lake IJssel, the Netherlands, measured at two locations for the years 2019 and 2020. There are 4 scripts for each location (i.e. Stavoren and Trintelhaven): for (1) the hourly and (2) daily temporal scale, and for analysis based on (3) our own observations (doi: 10.4121/16601675), and (4) routinely measured data by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI -https://www.knmi.nl/nederland-nu/klimatologie/uurgegevens (last access: 01-11-2021)) and the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat - https://waterinfo.rws.nl/#!/kaart/watertemperatuur/ (last access: 01-11-2021)). The datasets consist of evaporation data, and five possible explanatory variables: global radiation, wind speed, vertical vapour pressure gradient,vapour pressure deficit, and water temperature. The datasets of the routinely measured data consist of combined data that is sourced from KNMI (global radiation, wind speed, vapour pressure gradient, vapour pressure deficit) and Rijkswaterstaat (water temperature). For more information about the datasets that are based on our own observations, have a look at doi:10.4121/16601675 (related dataset).

Results of the study ' Shifts in regional water availability due to global tree restoration' (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00935-0). The data presents how global large-scale tree restoration could impact water fluxes. The data includes the evaporation (E) and streamflow (Q) under current land-cover and the change in precipitation (P), evaporation (E) and streamflow (Q) with global large-scale tree restoration. Data at 1/10 (0.1) degree spatial resolution.

Time series of open water evaporation of Lake IJssel, the Netherlands, during the years 2019 and 2020 at two locations at the border of the lake: Stavoren and Trintelhaven. Data was collected using the eddy covariance instrument of the type IRGASON at a sampling frequency of 20Hz. Data was processed using EddyPro software for a 30-min averaging interval. The measurement height was 7.5 m and 10.8 m in Stavoren and Trintelhaven, respectively. Variables Tair and RH were collected using a separate HMP155A instrument at a height of 7.4 m and 10.9 m above surface in Stavoren and Trintelhaven, respectively. This data belongs to the study 'Evaporation from a large lowland reservoir – observed dynamics during a warm summer'.

These are the images and a brief description of the applied workflow for the snowmelt observations used in the manuscript Understanding wind-driven snowmelt of patchy snow cover. The images are taken from 11 June to 15 June 2019 in the Finseelvi catchment, Norway. The images are organized in separate folders for the upwind and downwind edge of the snow patch. For more specific information, see the manuscript.

Northern peatlands store large amounts of carbon. Observations indicate that forests and peatlands in northern biomes can be alternative stable states for a range of landscape settings. Climatic and hydrological changes may reduce the resilience of peatlands and forests, induce persistent shifts between these states, and release the carbon stored in peatlands. Here, we present a dynamic simulation model constrained and validated by a wide set of observations to quantify how feedbacks in water and carbon cycling control resilience of both peatlands and forests in northern landscapes. Our results show that 34% of Europe (area) has a climate that can currently sustain existing rainwater-fed peatlands (raised bogs). However, raised bog initiation and restoration by water conservation measures after the original peat soil has disappeared is only possible in 10% of Europe where the climate allows raised bogs to initiate and outcompete forests. Moreover, in another 10% of Europe, existing raised bogs (concerning ∼20% of the European raised bogs) are already affected by ongoing climate change. Here, forests may overgrow peatlands, which could potentially release in the order of 4% (∼24 Pg carbon) of the European soil organic carbon pool. Our study demonstrates quantitatively that preserving and restoring peatlands requires looking beyond peatland-specific processes and taking into account wider landscape-scale feedbacks with forest ecosystems.

Droughts occur as a result of a lack of water compared with normal conditions. Whilst this appears trivial, the exact drought definition of drought is not. Especially as different drought types are present, resulting from the different variables in a hydrological system, each with unique characteristics. We use a common drought definition, the percentile score, and apply the same definition across all drought types, to study whether the actual occurrence of droughts matches the definition. We focus on the data-rich Dutch province of Gelderland, to study droughts from observations across five major components of the terrestrial hydrological cycle. When a percentile threshold of 20% is used as drought definition, corresponding to a mild drought, droughts anywhere in the system occur at least three times more frequently (73% of the time). On the other hand, the situation where drought occurs across all components of the terrestrial hydrological cycle is more than four times less likely than the drought threshold of 20% (namely 5% of the time). This can be attributed by both (1) the different responses across the hydrological system, and (2) the spatial variability present within each component of the hydrological system. With this study, we show the existence of the drought frequently paradox: although droughts are seen and defined as rare from a scientific perspective, when viewed from a societal or operational water management perspective in typical hydrological systems subject to spatial variability and other system complexity, droughts become common, rather than rare. This paradox is a consequence of an inconsistent use of the percentile score drought definition between research and operational water management, and better communication between the two domains is needed in search for a universally accepted drought definition.

Data used in the paper "Anatomy of the 2018 agricultural drought in The Netherlands using in situ soil moisture and satellite vegetation indices" in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. Precipitation and potential evaporation are derived from KNMI stations Volkel (Raam) and Twenthe (Twenthe), where the potential evaporation is calculated using Makkink. NIRv, VOD, and soil moisture values are averaged over the regions. See paper for more details (https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-6021-2020).

A large amount of studies focuses on aquatic diatoms’ ecology and their use in the assessment of water quality. Little is known about terrestrial diatoms’ ecological behaviour and sensitivity to environmental factors. We hypothesise that terrestrial diatom communities can serve as a proxy of anthropic disturbance levels in terrestrial sites. To test our hypothesis, we apply an aquatic index to soil communities that is to deliver new information on the physiographic controls on soil diatoms. Diatom and soil samples were collected in the Attert River basin in Luxembourg during three seasons, in sites characterised by different combinations of geological, soil (schist, marl and sandstone) and land use (forest, grassland and agriculture) features. We found an effect of seasonality on soil diatom communities, reflected by different species dominance and abundances in samples during the three seasons. Soil pH and land use (which translates in a different amount of total carbon and nitrogen in soil) were identified as the variables having the largest impact in structuring the communities and as among the features with the highest importance in defining the ecological status of the sites (i.e. disturbed farmlands having higher pH and lower carbon and nitrogen content). However, the lack of information about the sensitivity of some of the most abundant terrestrial species in our study area caused some discrepancies between the expected (i.e. forested areas with low anthropic disturbance) and the obtained results, with several forested sites classified as having high anthropic disturbance. These results suggest that soil communities are likely to contain information about soil ecological status and highlight the importance of a better characterisation of terrestrial diatom species for developing a quality index based on soil communities.

Stream confluences are important hotspots of aquatic ecological processes. Water mixing dynamics at stream confluences influence physio-chemical characteristics of the stream as well as sediment mobilisation and pollutant dispersal. In this study, we investigated the potential for handheld thermal infrared (TIR) imagery to provide rapid information on stream water mixing dynamics at small scales. In-situ visualisation of water mixing patterns can help reduce analytical errors related to stream water sampling locations and improve our understanding of how confluences and tributaries influence aquatic ecological communities. We compared TIR-inferred stream temperature distributions with water electrical conductivity and temperature (measured with a submerged probe) data from cross-channel transects. We show that the use of a portable TIR camera can enhance the visualisation of mixing dynamics taking place at stream confluences, identify the location of the mixing front between two different water sources and the degree of mixing. Interpretation of handheld TIR observations also provided information on how stream morphology and discharge can influence mixing dynamics in small streams. Overall, this study shows that TIR imagery is a valuable support technique for eco-hydrological investigation at small stream confluences.

Wetlands are important reservoirs of water, carbon and biodiversity. They are typical landscapes of lowland regions that have high potential for water retention. However, the hydrology of these wetlands in tropical regions is often studied in isolation from the processes taking place at the catchment scale. Our main objective is to study the hydrological dynamics of one of the largest tropical rainforest regions on an island using a combination of satellite remote sensing and novel observations from dedicated field campaigns. This contribution offers a comprehensive analysis of the hydrological dynamics of two neighbouring poorly gauged tropical basins; the Kapuas basin (98g700gkm2) in West Kalimantan and the Mahakam basin (77g100gkm2) in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Both basins are characterised by vast areas of inland lowlands. Hereby, we put specific emphasis on key hydrological variables and indicators such as discharge and flood extent. The hydroclimatological data described herein were obtained during fieldwork campaigns carried out in the Kapuas over the period 2013-2015 and in the Mahakam over the period 2008-2010. Additionally, we used the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) rainfall estimates over the period 1998-2015 to analyse the distribution of rainfall and the influence of El-Niño - Southern Oscillation. Flood occurrence maps were obtained from the analysis of the Phase Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) images from 2007 to 2010. Drought events were derived from time series of simulated groundwater recharge using time series of TRMM rainfall estimates, potential evapotranspiration estimates and the threshold level approach. The Kapuas and the Mahakam lake regions are vast reservoirs of water of about 1000 and 1500gkm2 that can store as much as 3 and 6.5 billiongm3 of water, respectively. These storage capacity values can be doubled considering the area of flooding under vegetation cover. Discharge time series show that backwater