the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Exploring drought hazard, vulnerability, and related impacts to agriculture in Brandenburg
Abstract. Adaptation to an increasingly dry regional climate requires spatially explicit information about current and future risks. Existing drought risk studies often rely on expert-weighted composite indicators, while empirical evidence on impact-relevant factors is still scarce. The aim of this study is to investigate to what extent hazard and vulnerability indicators can explain observed agricultural drought impacts via data-driven methods. We focus on the German federal state of Brandenburg, 2013–2022, including several consecutive drought years. As impact indicators we use thermal-spectral anomalies (LST/NDVI) on field level, and empirical yield gaps from reported statistics on county level. Empirical associations to the impact indicators on both spatial levels are compared. Non-linear models explain up to about 60 % variance in the yield gap data, with lumped models for all crops being more stable than models for individual crops, and models for the drought years performing better than for the pre-drought years. Meteorological drought in June and soil quality are selected as strongest impact-relevant factors. Rye is found less vulnerable than wheat, despite growing on poorer soils. LST/NDVI only weakly relates to our empirical yield gaps. We recommend comparing different impact indicators on multiple scales to proceed with the development of empirically grounded risk maps.
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Status: open (until 12 Jul 2024)
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2024-1149', Marthe Wens, 08 Jun 2024
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The manuscript and research behind are highly interesting, innovative and relevant to the journal.
I have only very few comments, except that I miss a discussion section (I don't find a deep gap analysis, recommendations for future research nor a comprehensive summary of findings with a thorough comparison with existing research outputs in the current version - parts of it are covered in other chapters but I don't think that is clear enough). Besides, While the results are written down neatly with some informative figures, it is hard to follow for people not working with similar models. I think the manuscript could benefit from a sentence here and there saying "meaning that..." where the result is explained in an easily interpretable way (especially in the parts where SHAP is used).
Here some more detailed other comments:
There is a clear justification of the research and methodological choices made. While referenced once, the method is quite like the study of Naumann et al 2021 and the European Drought atlas - the differences can be highlighted better.
I like that multiples ways of looking at (quantifying) impact are tested, that you compare empirical and modelled impact on production. The general workflow figure is very clear.
In line 141, I would disagree with the definition of vulnerability (or the phrasing thereof) as a characteristic of exposure. Maybe as an internal characteristic of the exposed items? At least the IPCC would not describe it that way.
I wonder why a groundwater and/or streamflow indicator was not considered as potential hazard/predictor? And I like the calculating of the magnitude of deficit, I wonder how sensitive the results are to the choice of -0.5 as threshold for these?
The detrending of the impact data is done with a moving window: were there no sharp agrotech jumps in the yield over time?
L193: "we refer to..." this sentence is a bit unclear.
Paragraph starting at L203: it is a bit unclear whether you take modelled or empirical yield gaps as closer to 'the reality'. Also, starting from line 209, this alinea is fuzzy. i think this is the first time there is a reference to a reference period? I don't fully understand what is conveyed there - maybe rephrase?Looking into the list of indicators, I would miss some related to irrigation and general farm management, county rules on when crops can be planted/harvested, use of fertiliser, market prices etc. Some of this info might be available?
(most of) the socio economic vulnerability indicators will barely have an effect on the hazard impact link (if impacts are yield deficits) but will influence how this drought loss cascades through society. A critical reflection could be good here.
l324: this paragraph is raises some questions. how does it relate to the previous paragraphs? Why is this relevant / what is the key take away from it?
The R2 scores are not high. It is explained in the manuscript, but some figures showing time series of obs/pred could help explaining why that is not considered problematically low. and add in the discussion how htis could potentially be improved.
The paragraph starting at l403 is a nice and critical piece. also the conclusion is concise, comprehensive and clear
Some observations I am wondering whether the authors considered (and could thus address in the discussion):
The use of XGBoost, rather than random forests, does limit the amount of variability in between trees. that is a pity as different trees can give different potential pathways to impact and thus account for different drought types.
The impact variable is continuous, rather that categorized or made boolean. that might have an influence on which types of nonlinearity the models can capture.
No accumulation times nor lag times were tested. This could also potentially improve the models to reflect diversity of drought types.
For crop losses in economic terms, were price shocks accounted for?The piece could end with some key take aways for farmers, for agricultural ministries and for drought disaster managers. now the suggestions are not very specific, but there are quite some learnings in the paper that could be translated into specific policy advises.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1149-RC1
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