Due to climate change, land ecosystems are experiencing significant temperature rise, contributing to widespread increases in vapor pressure deficit and drought frequency. The combination of soil and atmospheric droughts leads to enhanced water limitation, reduced vegetation growth, land degradation, food insecurity, and forest mortality, making the forecast and mitigation of drought urgent. 

Recent advances in monitoring networks and model predictions provide unprecedented information on drivers of drought and plant responses both in croplands and natural ecosystems. Additionally, our understanding of plant physiological responses to water limitation improved thanks to newly developed imaging methods applied to soil, root, xylem vessels, and leaves. Similarly, models simulating plant hydraulics and water-carbon fluxes are now capable of including key processes in soil, root, xylem, and leaves to predict water use strategies from individual plants to ecosystems.

Despite advances in measuring and modelling across scales, the challenge of transferring knowledge across the different disciplines (e.g., climate science, plant physiology, ecology, agronomy, hydrology, and soil science) and scales (from the individual cell to organs, plants, and up to ecosystem  or regional scales) hinders the progress in drought research. 

Evidence of recent drought events with drought indicator map* in June 2023 and drying trees in a forest of Germany.

*Drought in Europe - June 2023 JRC Global Drought Observatory (GDO) of the Cop1ernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) GDO/EDO data up to 20/06/2023

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