Soil drought has reached the highest ‘extreme’ classification level in nearly half of the Czech Republic, affecting mainly Moravia, according to the InterSucho website, operated by the Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CzechGlobe).
In 40% of the country, soil moisture at a depth of up to one meter is no more than 15 millimetres, and in a quarter of the territory, relative saturation is at or below 10%, which marks the wilting point, at which plants can no longer draw moisture from the soil, the website states.
Although the tropical heat has subsided over the past ten days, it has only rained in a small part of the country. “Precipitation fell mainly in the northeast and east of Moravia, with higher totals also recorded in the Krkonose Mountains. However, in more than half of the country, less than five millimetres of rain fell over the entire week,” said the InterSucho report.
Scientists determine the severity of drought as the ratio of the current condition to the average condition from 1961 to 2015 at a depth of up to one meter.
The lowest soil moisture levels, at 10% or less, are mainly found in southern Moravia, in the Plzen Region, parts of southwestern and southern Bohemia, in the Usti nad Labem Region around the Eger River and below the Ore Mountains, and also in the Elbe River Basin roughly between Hradec Kralove and Kolin. Soil saturation exceeds 70% only in the Beskydy and Krkonose Mountains. In the rest of the country, the field capacity is filled to no more than 40% almost everywhere.
Due to the drought, farmers are losing part of their harvest. The drought is also a problem for forests, which are not producing timber because trees are growing very little, and may even die in the worst cases. Trees in cities are faring even worse.
According to data from the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, river levels are also very low. At dozens of monitoring stations, flow rates are below the drought threshold, and many streams have dried up.
“The best chance for rain will be on Tuesday and Wednesday, when stronger thunderstorms are expected. More could follow, mainly in Bohemia on Friday,” said the InterSucho experts.
The situation is also very dire in other European countries. “There is an extreme water shortage in France and Britain, as well as in southern Germany, Austria and northern Italy. One of the dry areas also covers Slovakia and Hungary,” the InterSucho experts stated on social media. As a result, a number of wildfires have already broken out in the southern regions.
