Streamflow droughts, defined as below normal water in rivers, occur all around the world. Research to streamflow droughts in catchments with natural flow conditions is crucial to gain process understanding about the natural influences on the latter. However, catchments completely free of anthropogenic disturbances are sparse, especially in densely populated countries such as Germany. Furthermore, the locations of catchments with near-natural flow are often not representative for regions with a high socioeconomic vulnerability to droughts. In these more vulnerable areas, human activities like groundwater extraction can intensify streamflow droughts. On the other hand, constructions such as reservoirs might mitigate or limit the severity of drought events. The question is how different kinds of human activities influence streamflow drought characteristics.

The aim of this thesis is (1) collect data on anthropogenic influences for Germany (2) test what the influence of these anthropogenic influences is on streamflow drought characteristics such as duration and severity (3) investigate how these anthropogenic influences change the historical streamflow record. Daten und Methoden

- Dataset of German streamflow records and metadata.

- Collecting information on anthropogenic influences from sources such as the hydrological atlas Germany (http://geoportal.bafg.de/mapapps/resources/apps/HAD/index.html?lang=de).

- Comparing drought characteristics between near-natural and anthropogenic-influenced streamflow records and identifying patterns in streamflow records that are caused by anthropogenic activities.

- Programming skills (R, MATLAB or other)

- Some experience with GIS-software

Kerstin Stahl, Erik Tijdeman

English

The study will be conducted within the international DrIVER project (www.drought.uni-freiburg.de)