Quantifying the response of water and carbon balances to land cover and climate extremes across Germany
| Authors: | Karim Pyarali, Lulu Zhang, Ning Liu, Abdulhakeem Al-Qubati, Ge Sun |
| Year: | 2026 |
| Type: | Scientific Journal |
| Station: | Southern Research Station |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-4157-2026 |
| Source: | Hydrology and Earth System Sciences |
Abstract
Land cover and extreme weather events are closely connected to ecosystem services like water yield and carbon sequestration. Understanding how carbon and water respond to human disturbances is critical for managing these resources and realize desired ecosystem services at the national llevel. The monthly scale ecosystem model, Water Supply Stress Index (WaSSI), was tested and applied across Germany for mapping carbon and water balances from 2001 to 2019. We estimated that ecosystems in Germany generate 84.86 billion m3 of water yield and sequester 106.03 Tg of carbon annually on average. Most of the precipitation was lost as evapotranspiration in eastern states that were comparatively drier in river flows than the rest of the country. Croplands, urban areas and Evergreen Needle Forests (ENF) provide 82.5 % of the national water yield, while the forest lands share the majority (56.3 %) of land carbon sequestration altogether. Our simulation results highlight the importance of sparse land covers (e.g. wetlands) in carbon sequestration. Findings also suggest that national water yield and carbon balances are sensitive to extreme events such as the floods in 2002 and 2013 and the extreme drought in 2003 and 2018. We found that hydrologic buffers from the previous year played an important role in mitigating negative impacts on both carbon and water availability. This study highlights that, when integrated with local data, a relatively simple modelling approach is adequate to quantify the coupled water and carbon responses to climatic and land cover variability at a large scale. We conclude that land management of both forests and croplands is vital to sustain ecosystem services under a changing climate at regional to national levels.