Climate and regional land-use and landcover change (LUCC) impact the ecosystem of the Upper Rhine Area (URA) and transform large parts of the landscape into strongly irrigated agricultural cropland. The increase of long-term drought periods and the trend towards low summer precipitation totals trigger an increase in groundwater scarcity and amplify the negative effects of extensive irrigation purposes and freshwater consumption in a hydrologically sensitive region in Central Europe. This article presents qualitative transnational open source remote sensing temporal series of vegetation indices (NDVI) and groundwater level development to tracing near real-time vegetation change and socio-ecological feedbacks during periods of climate extremes in the Upper Rhine Area (2018–2020). Increased freshwater consumption caused a dramatic drop in groundwater availability, which eventually led to a strong degradation of the vegetation canopy and caused governmental regulations in July 2020. Assessing vegetation growth behavior and linking groundwater reactions in the URA through open source satellite data contributes to a rapidly accessible understanding of the ecosystem’s feedbacks on the local to the transnational scale and further enables risk management and eco-political regulations in current and future decision-making processes.

中文翻译：

---

使用开源 Sentinel-2 数据追踪 2018-2020 年异常干旱期间莱茵河上游地区的实时跨国水文敏感性和作物灌溉

气候和区域土地利用和土地覆盖变化 (LUCC) 影响上莱茵河地区 (URA) 的生态系统，并将大部分景观转变为灌溉强烈的农田。长期干旱期的增加和夏季降水总量偏低的趋势引发了地下水短缺的加剧，并放大了中欧水文敏感地区粗放灌溉和淡水消耗的负面影响。本文介绍了定性的跨国开源遥感植被指数 (NDVI) 时间序列和地下水位发展，以追踪莱茵河上游地区（2018-2020 年）极端气候期间近乎实时的植被变化和社会生态反馈。