Average monthly backward moisture footprints for 40 Ramsar wetland basins under potential and current vegetation scenarios (2008 - 2017)

The dataset contains the backward moisture footprints of the basins of 40 selected Ramsar wetlands for a base run with ERA5 reanalysis evaporation and precipitation, and two additional runs based on evaporation and precipitation from a potential vegetation and a current land use scenario. The dataset can be used to study the upwind moisture sources of the 40 included wetland basins under 'normal' conditions (ERA5 reanalysis), and under a potential vegetation scenario and a current land used scenario.The data was generated to study the impact of upwind land use changes and hydroclimatic changes on selected wetland basins (Fahrländer et al. (2024) using the UTrack atmospheric moisture tracking database by Tuinenburg et al. (2020) and data inputs from the ERA5 reanalysis dataset (Hersbach et al. 2020) and from Wang-Erlandsson et al. (2018) (see References section).

The moisture footprints are stored in individual NetCDF format files for each wetland basin and in separate folders for each run. The files are marked with the according Ramsar Convention ID for each respective wetland. The footprints are saved in a spatial resolution of 0.5° and contain monthly average evaporation flows for the period 2008 - 2017. The backward footprints contain the moisture sources for the precipitation in the wetland basins, whereas the forward footprint contain the locations where the evaporation from the basins rains down again.

In addition, the dataset contains the delineated basins of the 40 Ramsar wetlands, which are provided in shapefile format and marked with the individual wetland ID of the Ramsar Convention.

References:

Fahrländer, S. F., Wang‐Erlandsson, L., Pranindita, A., & Jaramillo, F. (2024). Hydroclimatic Vulnerability of Wetlands to Upwind Land Use Changes. Earth’s Future, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.1029/2023EF003837

Hersbach, H., Bell, B., Berrisford, P., Hirahara, S., Horányi, A., Muñoz‐Sabater, J., et al. (2020). The ERA5 global reanalysis. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 146(730), 1999–2049. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.3803

Tuinenburg, O. A., Theeuwen, J. J. E., & Staal, A. (2020). High-resolution global atmospheric moisture connections from evaporation to precipitation. Earth System Science Data, 12(4), 3177–3188. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-3177-2020

Wang-Erlandsson, L., Fetzer, I., Keys, P., van der Ent, R. J., Savenije, H. H. G., & Gordon, L. J. (2018). Remote land use impacts on river flows through atmospheric teleconnections. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 22(8), 4311–4328. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-4311-2018