News

New paper from our group! “Streamflow droughts aggravated by human activities despite management” in ERL https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac5def We investigated the influence of human activities on streamflow drought in the complexity of real world cases, using observation data, qualitative expert assessment, consistent drought analysis, and statistics. We found that groundwater and surface water abstractions aggravate streamflow droughts … Continue reading What we write: Anne F. Van Loon

We published a paper on the "Impacts of compound hot–dry extremes on US soybean yields" in Earth System Dynamics. Our results show that soybean yields are most negatively impacted by the combination of high temperature (T) and low soil moisture (SM) during summer. Figure below shows observed (dots) and modelled (contour-lines) yield values. Note the … Continue reading What we write: Raed Hamed

Anne Van Loon has received a positive decision on her ERC Starting Grant proposal. The PerfectSTORM (‘STOrylines of futuRe extreMes’) project will provide five years of funding for research on droughts and floods. Future climate projections show a strengthening of the hydrological cycle with more droughts and floods expected. This means a higher likelihood of … Continue reading ERC Starting Grant for Anne Van Loon

- By Anne Van Loon, Marthe Wens, Raed Hamed Like many others around the world, we have been forced to move our teaching completely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the challenges, this has also been an opportunity for us to develop new teaching methods, try flipping the classroom, and explore the use of … Continue reading Online teaching in courses related to climate risk, drought, water resources and sustainability

Last week we had several discussions within our research group in Amsterdam about #BlackLivesMatter, #ShutDownSTEM & racism in academia. I'm really grateful for the open exchange we had about this sensitive subject, which I think is very important. We feel we should share the outcomes of these discussions, so that others might be inspired to … Continue reading Racism in academia

We are happy to announce that at IVM – VU Amsterdam we have 2 PhD vacancies related to the new EU-funded DOWN2EARTH project. DOWN2EARTH project will assess critical research gaps within the dryland regions of the Horn of Africa (HAD), including i) how climate change affects the characteristics of rainfall and groundwater storage, ii) how … Continue reading 2 PHD VACANCIES DROUGHT RISK IN EAST AFRICA

In Feb 2020 I have moved from my old home at the University of Birmingham (UK) to an exiting new opportunity at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (the Netherlands). I have slightly updated my profile here and also have an (empty) VU page here. At VU I will work as Associate Professor in Drought Risk at … Continue reading Transfer to VU Amsterdam

Our writing retreat in the Peak District took place from 4 to 9 August and had 12 participants from Physical and Human Geography and Environmental Science (University of Birmingham, Bristol, Loughborough, Bologna, China). The week was again very productive and collaborative. This time we trialled structured writing in the morning (Pomodoro-style writing blocks of 40 … Continue reading 2019 writing retreat

Stijn Beernink (KWR Water) presented our research on how to include hydrology in mangrove restoration at the MMM5 conference in Singapore last week. Have a look at the poster here: poster_MMM5_2019_mangrove restoration_portrait. TAKE HOME MESSAGES: 1) failure of mangrove planting can be prevented by considering hydrological conditions 2) hydrological classification can guide making suitable hydrological conditions … Continue reading The hydrology of mangrove restoration