Zeitschrift für Geographie und Naturkatastrophen
Offener Zugang

Abstrakt

Trends in Some Long-term Drought Drivers

Alfred de Jager

The droughts that hit North and North Western Europe in 2018 and 2019 served as a wake-up call that also temperate regions are affected by this kind of slow progressing or creeping disasters. The impacts of these meteorological droughts may have been exacerbated by long-term drivers, such as land-use changes, changes that are spread over a long time span, even difficult visible for an individual, but make a big difference in how the rare weather event impacts a region. In this paper we introduce three long-term drivers, forest fires in Europe, urbanization, and deforestation.