In the frame of the project "Extreme droughts and their impact on agriculture in the selected continental climates of Europe", financed under competition for multilateral scientific and technological cooperation in the Danube region, in April 2024 the third work meeting was held in Vienna. Participants in the meeting were the members of scientific teams from the partner organizations: Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski“, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU), Vienna and Comenius University, Bratislava. From Sofia University, prof. Nina Nikolova and assist. prof. Simeon Matev from the Department "Climatology, Hydrology and Geomorphology“ participated in the meeting.
The project aims to contribute to clarifying current trends and future projections of drought occurrence and consequences for agriculture at a regional scale by improving the capacity to study and assess meteorological and agricultural droughts and by increasing scientific knowledge and public awareness of extreme climate events and the drought in particular. The methodology for calculating drought indicators will be subjected to deeper analysis to determine a representative index for the study of drought. The GIS-based ARIS system at selected Austrian sites with different soil conditions will be applied to calculate over several years daily crop-specific soil water balance, soil water content, soil water depletion, and potential crop yield reduction. The results will serve as a reference for comparison to various other calculated drought indicators of the project partners (Slovakia, Bulgaria) and their validation or adaptation for application under the environmental conditions of different agricultural regions in the three partner countries.
During the working meeting, discussions were held on research methodology and meteorological data processing, and a joint scientific publication plan was developed. The meteorological park of BOKU and the laboratory for calibration of automatic meteorological stations were visited.
