Poland is drying up: drought since 2015 - this is how the country now wants to fix centuries-old mistakes

Little precipitation and ever higher temperatures lead to water shortages in Poland.

The country wants to react.

• Temperatures * have been rising in Poland for years.

• In spring there is no melt due to excessively high temperatures.

• After forests have been drained and cleared, there are hardly any wetlands left.

• The straightening of rivers contributes to the rapid drainage of the water.

Warsaw - Not only in southern Europe there are drought problems: Poland also suffers from drought: The hydrologist Grzegorz Walijewski from the Institute for Meteorology and Water Management - State Research Institute (IMGW-PiB) explained in the Polish media that in Poland * there has been a drought since 2015 can be spoken. “And the winters are warmer and we see more rain than snow. The spring melt is very important because the Polish rivers are heavily dependent on this process. The moisture in the soil and thus the surface and groundwater are also related to the melt, ”said Walijewski.

In the last few years there have been repeated periods of drought - they mainly affect agriculture.

In June there was a water deficit in 15 of the 16 Polish voivodships, which is also known as a scenic drought.

The agricultural drought is a period in which the scarce water supply leads to crop losses due to insufficient water supply for plants and animals.

From April to June the water deficit in Poland averaged - 108 mm.

Poland: Problems due to climate change and human behavior

Poland is generally not an acutely arid country, but with an average rainfall of 650 mm it is one of the less arid among the European countries. For comparison: In Germany, the annual precipitation is almost 800 mm. In France this value is slightly above 800 mm. In Poland, around 70 percent of drinking water comes from groundwater abstraction. Compared to Germany, which has a share of 61 percent (2020), Poland is more dependent on groundwater.

The drought report of the State Water Management (Wody Polskie) from 2020 emphasizes the problem of the lack of precipitation * in the winter months.

There it states explicitly: “The first and most important is the change in the precipitation structure, including a significantly dry and warmer winter season that has been occurring for at least a few years.

This affects not only agricultural drought, but also hydrological drought which is exacerbated by low water levels in rivers and ultimately hydrogeological drought which affects groundwater resources. "

"The frost-free winters caused another problem with the water table"

With the lack of precipitation in winter, a cycle is set in motion that has a devastating effect on both surface water and bodies of water and then ultimately on the groundwater levels. In the Wielkopolska region in the center of the country, an average of 520 mm of precipitation is measured. The fluctuations are considerable and range from 320 mm (1982) to 760 mm (2010). The years 2018 and 2019 were particularly dry with 350 mm each.

“The frost-free winters caused another problem with the water table. If the surface of the ground is icy, the precipitation penetrates past the icy areas and looks for cracks in the ice, where the water can then penetrate deep into the ground and ultimately stabilize the groundwater level in this way, this no longer occurs, ”explains Professor Jan Przybyłek from the Institute of Geology at Adam Mickiewicz University.

The past winter of 2021 showed signs of improvement, as the precipitation and the subsequent melt could enrich the soil with water, but from May onwards there were increasing indications that a drought would also occur this year. The small amount of precipitation, which is now much more unevenly distributed in terms of time and geography, is not sufficiently bound in Poland, so that it drains off too quickly and its effects fizzle out. The reasons for this are the poor water-binding capacity, which hydrologists refer to as retention. Over the centuries, retention-enhancing wetlands have been drained and forests cleared so that the areas can be used for agriculture. In the last few years alone, their share of wetlands has decreased from 15 to 6 percent of the country's area.

Poland and the fight against drought: possible measures

The Polish experts are mainly concentrating on the question of how scarce water can be better bound in the future.

The first measures of the state water management were already initiated in 2020.

Weirs and gates were installed in the existing canals to prevent the water from escaping.

Above all, attempts are being made to stop or slow down the rapid flow into the river beds in order to bind the water resources longer.

The retention value could be increased to 7 percent through the first measures, but it is far from the target value of 20 percent, which is standard in many other European countries.

The construction of retention basins is also part of the catalog of measures of the Wody Polskie, which are a state institution of the Polish water management.

The further expansion of retention basins should be based on the one hand on the favorable topographical conditions and in particular the central Polish level should be kept in view.

In this region the drought is particularly pronounced and the need for action is great.

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The drought is to be counteracted with reservoirs.

One example is Rusałka, a reservoir with an area of ​​36.7 hectares in Poznan.

© Aleksandra Fedorska

Poland: reservoir revitalization as a chance against the drought?

The Polish rivers, which have generally been straightened in the past, make a major contribution to increasing the flow rate.

If possible, this process should be limited or reversed.

Experts argue here for the restoration of the natural conditions.

The revitalization of reservoirs and other bodies of water has already started in isolated cases.

However, the Drought Report emphasizes that the tasks will be far more extensive in the coming decades.

Accordingly, future generations in Poland will always have to be ready to optimally manage and protect the increasingly scarce water.

(Aleksandra Fedorska) * Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA