Lars Ribbe

Lars Ribbe
TH Köln - University of Applied Sciences | FH Köln · Institute for Technology and Resources Management in the Tropics and Subtropics

Dr.rer.nat

About

141
Publications
73,606
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3,393
Citations
Additional affiliations
June 1997 - February 2021
TH Köln - University of Applied Sciences
Position
  • Dean
Description
  • Professor for Integrated Land and Water Resources Management

Publications

Publications (141)
Article
With the escalating impacts of drought events driven by climate change, reducing the uncertainty of drought projections becomes critical for enhancing risk management and adaptation strategies. This study aimed to develop an index for assessing the performance of CMIP6 Global Climate Models in simulating meteorological drought scenarios across regi...
Article
Full-text available
Similar to numerous water- and data-scarce regions, Egypt confronts a critical challenge in sustaining food production for its rapidly growing population. Consequently, the country’s water and land resources are under considerable stress and require careful management. About half of Egypt’s both annually harvested areas and renewable freshwater are...
Article
Full-text available
The integrated approach to managing the fundamental resources for human life, namely, water, energy, food, and the environment as their irreplaceable foundation, presents a profound opportunity for sustainable development. However, despite their huge potential, integrated water, energy, food, and environment systems (iWEFEs) are rarely put into pra...
Article
Full-text available
Decisions on irrigation water management are usually made at different levels, including farms, water user associations (WUAs), and regional water planning agencies. The latter generally have good access to information and decision tools regarding water resources management. However, these remain out of reach to the final water users, namely the fa...
Article
Full-text available
Producing more food for a growing population requires sustainable crop intensification and diversification, particularly in high-potential areas such as the seasonal floodplain wetlands of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). With emerging water shortages and concerns for conserving these multi-functional wetlands, a further expansion of the cropland area mus...
Article
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Responding effectively to climate crisis requires strong science-policy links to be put in place. Past research on the research-policy interface indicates longstanding challenges that have become more acute in the case of climate science, since this requires multi-disciplinary approaches and faces distinctive political challenges in linking knowled...
Article
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Jordan is considered one of the most water-scarce countries in the world. As a result, Jordan took several steps toward good water governance by setting goals, policies, strategies, and plans. However, several research studies show that it should be strengthened and improved. Research has shown that good water governance is necessary to achieve wat...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Producing more food for a growing population requires sustainable crop intensification and diversification, particularly in high-potential areas such as the seasonal floodplain wetlands of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). With emerging water shortages and concerns for conserving these multi-functional wetlands, a further expansion of the cropland area mus...
Article
Cities are rapidly expanding and invariably moving toward densification. Global challenges such as climate change, land use change, environmental degradation, and expanding economy in urban areas increase water-related problems. This study addresses the difficulty of operationalizing the concept of urban water security by applying an integrative in...
Article
Full-text available
Droughts are causing severe damages to tropical countries worldwide. Although water abundant, their resilience to water shortages during dry periods is often low. As there is little knowledge about tropical drought characteristics, reliable methodologies to evaluate drought risk in data scarce tropical regions are needed. We combined drought hazard...
Preprint
Full-text available
This study evaluated the performance of four state-of-the-art precipitation ( P ; CHIRPSv2, MSWEPv2.2, PERSIANN-CDR, and ERA5) and three state-of-the-art evaporation ( E a ; GLEAMv3.3a, SSEBopv4.0, and ERA5) products in the data-scarce province of Balochistan, Pakistan. The P products were evaluated through a point-to-pixel comparison at the monthl...
Article
Full-text available
Over the past decades, novel parameter regionalisation techniques have been developed to predict streamflow in data-scarce regions. In this paper, we examined how the choice of gridded daily precipitation (P) products affects the relative performance of three well-known parameter regionalisation techniques (spatial proximity, feature similarity, an...
Article
Full-text available
Study region: Nile Basin, Africa. Study focus: The accurate representation of precipitation (P) and actual evapotranspiration (ETa) patterns is crucial for water resources management, yet there remains a high spatial and temporal variability among gridded products, particularly over data-scarce regions. We evaluated the performance of eleven stat...
Chapter
Full-text available
This interdisciplinary volume examines how nine arid or semi-arid river basins with thriving irrigated agriculture are doing now and how they may change between now and mid-century. The rivers studied are the Colorado, Euphrates-Tigris, Jucar, Limarí, Murray-Darling, Nile, Rio Grande, São Francisco, and Yellow. Engineered dams and distribution netw...
Chapter
This interdisciplinary volume examines how nine arid or semi-arid river basins with thriving irrigated agriculture are doing now and how they may change between now and mid-century. The rivers studied are the Colorado, Euphrates-Tigris, Jucar, Limarí, Murray-Darling, Nile, Rio Grande, São Francisco, and Yellow. Engineered dams and distribution netw...
Chapter
Smallholder farmers in the coastal zone are particularly vulnerable to the increasing impacts of salinity and salinity related problems stemming from climate change impacts. Availability of climatic information offers great potentials for informed decision making by farmers at the face of increasing uncertainty for their agricultural production sys...
Chapter
Availability and accessibility of safe drinking water remain some of the main challenges in many parts of the world, especially in developing countries. Brazil and Nepal are two developing countries from two different continents, and both are considered water resourceful countries, but they still face significant water and sanitation problems. An e...
Chapter
Full-text available
The Euphrates and Tigris basin consists of all the rivers, canals, and streams that drain to the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, involving tributaries that flow from neighboring countries and join in Iraq. Water in the Euphrates and Tigris basin is highly polluted, especially in Iraq - the most downstream country. Demographic pressure, hydro-engineeri...
Preprint
Full-text available
Over the past years, novel parameter regionalisation techniques have been developed to predict streamflow in data-scarce regions. In this paper, we examined how the choice of gridded daily precipitation (P) products affects individual catchment calibration and verification, as well as the relative performance of three well-known regionalisation tec...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In the last decades, we have witnessed increasing losses on crop yield due to an increase in magnitude and frequency of hydrological extremes such as droughts and floods. These hazards promote systematic and regressive impacts on the economy and human behavior. Risk transfer mechanisms are key to cope with the economic impacts of these events, ther...
Article
Full-text available
Since 2010, Chile has been affected by a long-term drought, often referred to as the Mega-Drought. To adapt to future drought events, we need reliable hydro-climatic information based on robust observations and models. However, reliable hydro-climatic data needed for hydrological modelling of remote Andean catchments are rarely available. Our objec...
Article
Rainfed agriculture is Uganda's mainstay across the different regions of its territory. Farmland area has been reported to increase despite agriculture's vulnerability to climate variations. This great interplay among land-use dynamics, climate extremes, and food systems is, however, understudied. The current research, therefore, explores this inte...
Book
This book assesses the current water-security situation in Asia. The thematic areas of the book discuss the United Nation’s sustainable development goals with a particular focus on Goal 6 (“Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation”) and Goal 13 (“Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”). Asia has b...
Preprint
Cities are rapidly expanding and invariably moving toward densification. Global challenges such as climate change, land use change, environmental degradation, and expanding economy in urban areas increase water-related problems. This study addresses the difficulty of operationalizing the concept of urban water security by applying an integrative in...
Preprint
Full-text available
Droughts are causing severe damages to water abundant tropical countries worldwide. Their resilience to water shortages tends to be low, often due to a lack of water infrastructure. Moreover, drought characteristics and risk in tropical catchments are poorly understood, which makes it difficult to select adequate adaptation measures. Thus, reliable...
Chapter
The MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, with currently around 500 million inhabitants, is demographically, economically, and politically one of the most dynamic regions in the world. As the region is characterized by severe and growing water scarcity, the issue of water security and sustainable management of water resources is of outstandin...
Article
Full-text available
Against the background of a worldwide decrease in the number of gauging stations, the estimation of river discharge using spaceborne data is crucial for hydrological research, river monitoring, and water resource management. Based on the at-many-stations hydraulic geometry (AMHG) concept, a novel approach is introduced for estimating river discharg...
Article
To foster poverty reduction in drought-prone Araucanía, the Chilean Irrigation Commission is planning an important expansion of irrigated areas. Scenarios incorporating climate change (2030–2059) were simulated for a pilot basin using the WEAP water allocation model, showing that larger irrigated areas, coupled with higher temperatures and less pre...
Article
Full-text available
Water and energy are two pivotal areas for future sustainable development, with complex linkages existing between the two sectors. These linkages require special attention in the context of the energy transition. Against this background, this paper analyses the role of water availability in the development of solar thermal and photovoltaic power pl...
Article
Full-text available
Water security is a major concern for water-scarce cities that face dynamic water challenges due to limited water supply, climate change and increasing water demand. Framing urban water security is challenging due to the complexity and uncertainties of the definitions and assessment frameworks concerning urban water security. Several studies have a...
Article
The accurate representation of spatio-temporal patterns of precipitation is an essential input for numerous environmental applications. However, the estimation of precipitation patterns derived solely from rain gauges is subject to large uncertainties. We present the Random Forest based MErging Procedure (RF-MEP), which combines information from gr...
Article
Full-text available
Droughts can have serious negative impacts on the water quality needed for irrigated agriculture. The Metropolitan region of Chile is a relevant producer of high-value crops and is prone to droughts. Standardized Drought Indices were used to characterize meteorological and hydrological droughts for the period from 1985 to 2015. To understand the re...
Article
Full-text available
Understanding the human–water–food–climate nexus is central to achieving sustainable intensification (SI) in agriculture. This research uses a socio-hydrological approach to understand the underpinning for implementing SI in the Gezira Irrigation Scheme, Sudan, by integrating vegetation indices derived from remote sensing, ancillary, gridded soil a...
Article
Full-text available
Proper satellite-based crop monitoring applications at the farm-level often require near-daily imagery at medium to high spatial resolution. The combination of data from different ongoing satellite missions Sentinel 2 (ESA) and Landsat 7/8 (NASA) provides this unprecedented opportunity at a global scale; however, this is rarely implemented because...
Preprint
Full-text available
Proper satellite-based crop monitoring applications at the farm-level often require near-daily imagery at medium to high spatial resolution. The combination of data from different ongoing satellite missions Sentinel 2 (ESA) and Landsat 7/8 (NASA) provides this unprecedented opportunity at a global scale; however, this is rarely implemented because...
Article
Full-text available
Achieving urban water security is a major challenge for many countries. While several studies have assessed water security at a regional level, many studies have also emphasized the lack of assessment of water security and application of measures to achieve it at the urban level. Recent studies that have focused on measuring urban water security ar...
Article
Full-text available
Ecosystem Services (ES) are climate sensitive, vary by seasons, and support the majority of people's livelihoods in Bangladesh. Our research aimed to identify short-term (seasonal) and long-term (2000-2018) qualitative and quantitative dependence of rural livelihoods on ES in the southern wetland areas of Bangladesh. Primary data were collected thr...
Preprint
Proper satellite-based crop monitoring applications at the farm-level often require near-daily imagery at medium to high spatial resolution. The synthesizing of ongoing satellite missions by ESA (Sentinel 2) and NASA (Landsat7/8) provides this unprecedented opportunity at a global scale; nonetheless, this is rarely implemented because these procedu...
Article
Full-text available
Monitoring of crop water consumption, also known as actual evapotranspiration (ETa), is crucial for the prudent use of limited freshwater resources. Remote-sensing-based algorithms have become a popular approach for providing spatio-temporal information on ETa. Satellite-based ETa products are widely available. However, identifying an adequate prod...
Article
Participatory approaches evaluating and changing risk appraisal and management are crucial aspects de-termining disaster risk governance. Due to the wide gap in governance structures in Brazil, the complexity of theinstitutional arrangements in the State of Rio de Janeiro, and the dynamics of the local and municipal context,more complete informatio...
Article
Full-text available
Assessing irrigation performance plays an important role in improving irrigation efficiency and water resource management in the low land of Vu Gia-Thu Bon river basin where traditional irrigation practices are applied to a predominantly paddy rice cultivation. Relative Water Supply (RWS) and Relative Irrigation Supply (RIS) were selected as releva...
Poster
Full-text available
Groundwater is considered the major source of fresh water in the eastern desert (Badia) of Jordan. The arid climate with low rainfall and high evaporation rate, coupled with population growth and growing water demand, which amplified by migration from politically unstable countries, have put additional strains on this limited resource. Consequently...
Article
This study examines management approaches for hydropower generation and irrigation and domestic water supply for the Tekeze-Atbara, a transboundary river between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan, in above- and below-normal hydrologic conditions, considering current and future water demand scenarios. Satellite data are used to substitute for unavailable...
Article
Full-text available
In Palestine, open dumping and/or burning the waste, including agricultural waste, are prevalent practices resulting in emitting leachate and acidifying greenhouse gases. Composting the agricultural waste can reduce emissions and provide ‘compost’ as an organic fertilizer and soil amendment; yet, it has not been implemented at the national level. T...
Article
Full-text available
In the Indus River Basin, various hydrological modeling studies have been conducted in the context of climate change scenarios. However, none of these studies addressed the impact of socio-economic along with the climate change scenarios on sustainable water demand and supply. This study focused on socio-economic and Intergovernmental Panel on Clim...
Article
In the Indus River Basin, various hydrological modeling studies have been conducted in the context of climate change scenarios. However, none of these studies addressed the impact of socio-economic along with the climate change scenarios on sustainable water demand and supply. This study focused on socio-economic and Intergovernmental Panel on Clim...
Article
The Azraq basin, Jordan, is characterized by high variability and a heterogeneous spatial distribution of groundwater recharge. Most of the recharge occurs in the north of the basin. The central part of the basin is covered by wetland (Azraq Oasis), characterized by a unique ecosystem and biodiversity. Groundwater abstraction for agricultural and d...
Chapter
Impacts of human activities, mainly land use and land cover (LULC) changes, on hydrology and water quality are manifold and need to be ascertained. In order to understand and assess such impacts, water quality monitoring programs are crucial for collecting the required data. Transforming data into information is an important step, and water quality...
Chapter
Full-text available
A crucial element for risk governance and disaster risk reduction in recognized international frameworks involves inclusiveness of stakeholders. Due to the dimensions of risk governance processes in Brazil, the complexity of the institutional arrangements in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and the dynamicity of the local context, a combination of diff...
Chapter
Although Rio de Janeiro is considered to be well endowed with renewable water resources, it faces several water challenges. Recurrent floods and landslides and the major drought of 2014–2015 in the Paraíba do Sul river basin, its main source, have given a reality check to the population showing that also water scarcity can be a problem and that wat...
Article
Full-text available
The micro-watershed level can be a promising unit for the integration and coordination of water management functions that affect sustainable water use and livelihoods of local communities such as farmer groups. Recent projects in the state of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil have advocated interventions at this level. However, micro-watersheds are still no...
Article
We aimed to assess the long-term (1973–2014) and short-term (pre- and post-monsoon) quantities, values and changes of freshwater ecosystem services (FES) in the wetland areas of Southern Bangladesh using land cover change as a proxy indicator. Bangladesh is a sub-tropical country that receives >80% of its annual rainfall during the monsoon and post...
Article
Efficient utilization of the limited Water, Energy, and Food (WEF) resources in stressed transboundary river basins requires understanding their interlinkages in different transboundary cooperation conditions. The Blue Nile Basin, a transboundary river basin between Ethiopia and Sudan, is used to illustrate the impacts of cooperation between ripari...
Article
The change in land use has increased flood risk in Tunisia. This paper evaluates the impact of such changes on the Mellegue River basin in Tunisia. The semi-distributed (Hydrologiska Byråns Vattenbalansavdelning) HBV-Light hydrological model and remote sensing for two different periods were used in the evaluation. ArcGIS software was used to genera...
Article
Full-text available
Non-revenue water (NRW) is a major challenge for urban water security in Jordan. Quantifying leakage and pinpointing the location of leaks are difficult tasks in intermittent supply systems. This study aims to provide a structured analysis to determine the volume of leakage and its components in Madaba’s water distribution network. The study also o...
Article
The impact of climate variability on the Net Primary Productivity (NPP) of different land cover types and the reaction of NPP to drought conditions are still unclear, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This research utilizes public-domain data for the period 2000 through 2013 to analyze these aspects for several land cover types in Sudan and Ethiopi...
Article
In developing countries, an accurate representation of the spatio-temporal variability of rainfall is currently severely limited, therefore, satellite-based rainfall estimates (SREs) are promising alternatives. In this work, six state-of-the-art SREs (TRMM 3B42v7, TRMM 3B42RT, CHIRPSv2, CMORPHv1, PERSIANN-CDR, and MSWEPv2) are evaluated over three...
Article
Full-text available
Pakistan is currently facing physical and economic water scarcity issues that are further complicated by the rapid increase in its population and by climate change. Many studies have focused on the physical water scarcity using hydrological modeling and the measurement of the impact of climate change on water resources in the Upper Indus Basin (UIB...
Article
Full-text available
Hydrological droughts are one of the most damaging disasters in terms of economic loss in central Vietnam and other regions of South-east Asia, severely affecting agricultural production and drinking water supply. Their increasing frequency and severity can be attributed to extended dry spells and increasing water abstractions for e.g. irrigation a...
Article
Full-text available
The competing water uses within the Mara River Basin MRB has increased water demand, which has affected the Mara river. In this paper, water resources and demands were modelled using Water Evaluation and Planning system (WEAP), by which different methods and strategies were assessed to mitigate the overuse practices from the Mara river. For this, w...
Article
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Escalating tension and a sense of mistrust currently prevail between downstream and upstream countries in the Nile Basin over Ethiopia's construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Striving for self-sufficiency in hydropower generation, Ethiopia has initiated a new series of upstream reservoir construction projects, with the GERD be...
Chapter
Full-text available
With increasing demands and pressures on energy, food and water resources in the region of Eastern Nile Basin, development projects and also conflict potential along the Nile waters have increased. This study presents data on resource use patterns and reviews literature on cooperation potential among Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia in the sectors of wate...
Article
The flooding and landslides catastrophe in 2011 in the mountainous area of Rio de Janeiro State in Brazil affected more than 300,000 people and created unquantifiable material losses, mostly in the Nova Friburgo Municipality. Even with the available technologies, programs and measures for disaster prevention, the population was not prepared. Follow...