Project title: A High-resolution European Drought Atlas to assess moving drought events - HEDA
Registration number: 26-23789S
Provider: Czech Science Foundation
Programme: Standard Projects
Project coordinator: Global Change Research Institute AS CR, v. v. i.
Project partner: Czech University of Life Sciences Prague – Faculty of Environmental Sciences
CZU Principal investigator: Ing. Oldřich Rakovec, Ph.D.
Project manager: Ing. Petr Bašta
Project schedule: 01/2026–12/2028
Total project budget: CZK 11,460,000
FES project budget: CZK 3,806,000
Abstract:
The innovative concept of moving drought, paired with a newly established methodology for its identification, has unlocked the potential to analyze drought dynamics from 1981 to 2024. However, the data analysis from 1940 to 1980 remains less reliable and prior to 1900 almost impossible, thereby constraining our ability to conduct comprehensive trend analyses, especially concerning the evolving frequencies of "mobile" versus "static" droughts. To address this critical gap, we require a robust long-term, high-resolution dataset spanning the reindustrial era. This project is dedicated to creating a High-Resolution Drought Atlas for Europe (HEDA) and then analyzing moving drought phenomenon. The period of approximately 1775 to 2025 has been thoughtfully chosen to maximize the availability of tree-ring width (TRW) and tree-ring stable isotope (TSI) series, ensuring a minimum of 250 years of data while allowing for a significant overlap of 105 years (1921-2025) with daily instrumental measurements across Europe. If additional data becomes available, we may even advance the initial year.