Bamps et al. (2026) From past to future: Spatiotemporal insights into drought stress on Belgian pome fruit production for 1991–2090

Identification

• Journal: Agricultural Water Management
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-01-16
• Authors: Brecht Bamps, Anne Gobin, Ben Somers, Jos Van Orshoven
• DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2026.110151

Research Groups

• KU Leuven, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Leuven, Belgium
• KU Leuven Plant Institute, KU Leuven, Belgium

Short Summary

This study quantifies current and future location-specific drought hazards for Belgian pome fruit production (apple and pear) under climate change scenarios, projecting significant increases in transpiration deficit and net irrigation requirements by the late century.

Objective

• To provide a spatiotemporal assessment of drought hazards for temperate pome fruit orchards under current and future climatic conditions, hypothesizing that future meteorological changes will cause spatially heterogeneous meteorological and agricultural drought, potentially shifting optimal production regions within Belgium.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Belgium, at a 12.5 km × 12.5 km grid resolution.
• Temporal Scale: 1991–2090, analyzed in three 30-year periods: baseline (1991–2020), near future (2026–2055), and far future (2061–2090).

Methodology and Data

• Models used:
  • AquaCrop (spatially distributed crop growth model for daily soil water balance)
  • EURO-CORDEX ensemble (nine Global Circulation Model – Regional Climate Model combinations for climate projections)
  • Penman-Monteith method (for reference evapotranspiration, ET0)
  • SWAP model (Soil Water Atmosphere Plant model, used for groundwater table depths in Flanders)
  • Multivariate quantile mapping (for bias correction of climate data)
• Data sources:
  • Meteorological observations: Gridded Observational Dataset (GOD) from the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMI) (1961–2020, 5 km × 5 km resolution).
  • Climate projections: Bias-corrected EURO-CORDEX ensemble data for RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios (0.11° / ~12.5 km × 12.5 km resolution).
  • CO2 concentrations: Mauna Loa Observatory (historical) and IPCC (projections).
  • Soil data: AARDEWERK and AARDEWERK-Vlaanderen-2010 databases (soil profiles, texture, drainage, organic carbon, gravel content).
  • Groundwater data: Spatially explicit dataset for Flanders (Franken and Wolfs, 2022), extrapolated for other Belgian regions.
  • Pome fruit orchard locations: Agentschap Landbouw en Zeevisserij (2024).
  • Soil moisture measurements: Gravimetric soil moisture data from Janssens et al. (2011b) for model evaluation.

Main Results

• A spatially averaged increase in transpiration deficit of 61.4% (under RCP8.5) and 39.0% (under RCP4.5) is projected for the far future (2061–2090) compared to the baseline (1991–2020).
• A spatially averaged increase in net irrigation requirement of 32.3% (under RCP8.5) and 18.5% (under RCP4.5) is projected for the far future (2061–2090) compared to the baseline (1991–2020).
• Significant inter-climate model variability is observed, with interquartile ranges of 204.2% for transpiration deficit and 30.8% for net irrigation requirement under the RCP8.5 far future scenario.
• The projected increase in precipitation deficit during summer months leads to agricultural drought in a spatially heterogeneous manner, influenced by soil total available water content and depth to the shallow groundwater table.
• Intra-seasonal analysis shows an increasing gap between evapotranspiration and precipitation during July, August, and September, particularly pronounced in the far future under RCP8.5, with the monthly mode of drought shifting later in the year.
• Capillary rise contributes significantly to the soil water balance (0–101.6 mm seasonally) in northern Belgium where groundwater tables are shallow, but is projected to decrease in the future (up to -58.0 mm).
• Despite the overall increase in drought hazard, the suitability of current pome fruit production regions is not projected to change significantly relative to other agricultural regions in Belgium regarding agricultural drought.

Contributions

• First study to assess current and future drought hazards for perennial pome fruit production systems in temperate regions.
• Provides a comprehensive spatiotemporal assessment of drought hazards for Belgian pome fruit orchards under climate change, integrating spatially explicit climate projections, soil properties, and dynamic groundwater table depths.
• Highlights the critical importance of using a multi-model ensemble approach to account for substantial inter-climate model uncertainty in drought projections.
• Develops a transferable workflow for assessing regional current and future drought hazards that can be applied to other temperate fruit crops and production regions.

Funding

• Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO) VLaanderen (Grant number 1S23524N)
• Research Foundation Flanders

Citation

@article{Bamps2026From,
  author = {Bamps, Brecht and Gobin, Anne and Somers, Ben and Orshoven, Jos Van},
  title = {From past to future: Spatiotemporal insights into drought stress on Belgian pome fruit production for 1991–2090},
  journal = {Agricultural Water Management},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1016/j.agwat.2026.110151},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2026.110151}
}