Agricultural droughts, hydrological droughts and forest fires: identifying co-variabilities and prospects for multiple risk management

Context and challenges

The very recent past provides numerous other examples of such extreme events in many parts of the world (Greece, Portugal, Canary Islands, Canada, California, Australia, etc.). Many socio-economic sectors are put at risk by the occurrence of these hazards, whose probability of occurrence (individually and jointly) is likely to increase as a result of climate change: agriculture, forestry, energy, ecology, drinking water, civil security, tourism, etc.

Goals

The EauFeu! project focuses on agricultural (soil) drought, hydrological (river) drought and forest fires. Although they present different spatial and temporal signatures, these three hazards are interlinked as they result in part from shared driving forces: rainfall deficit, vegetation growth and resulting water use, temperature, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, etc. The main aim of the proposed interdisciplinary path is to understand, quantify and take into account the co-variability between these three hazards:

• The understanding stage will involve identifying the driving force variables that govern the variability of the three hazards, and proposing a qualitative scheme of causal relationships. 
•  The quantification stage will aim to transcribe this scheme in the form of a probabilistic model, which will be estimated using data collected in France. This model will enable the estimation of joint occurrence (or cascading) probabilities of hazards, using a spatialized vision. 
• The consideration stage will aim to take account of the lessons learned from the previous two stages, and to identify applications in terms of multiple risk management. 

INRAE structures