This symposium will give us the chance of exploring the topic of historical droughts whose contributions in the international research community are still very diffuse. It aims to bring together researchers working on historical droughts mainly in Europe. Extreme events throughout history that challenge the reactive capacity (resilience and adaptation) of societies will be highlighted. The symposium will bring to light information provided by a large diversity of narrative sources. Lying at the crossroads between environmental history, historical climatology, geography and hydrology, it will provide an international and interdisciplinary scope.

Programme

Day 1 – Thursday, 1^stJune 2017

08:30 Registration and Coffee

09:00 Welcome

•  Catherine Florentz (First Vice-President and Vice-President for Research and Education, University of Strasbourg)
•  Dominique Badariotti (Director of LIVE, CNRS, University of Strasbourg)

09:15 Opening

 Carmen de Jong (University of Strasbourg, France)

Session 1: Narrative Sources for Reconstructing Droughts(Chair: Emmanuel Garnier, tbc)

• 09:30 Keynote 1:Outstanding droughts in the past – nightmare visions of Global Warming, Christian Pfister (University of Bern, Switzerland)
• 10:00 Famine and Drought in Jeremiah 14* and Joel 1-2* and their reception in 17th century Europe, Sara Kipfer (University of Bern, Switzerland)
• 10:20 For a history of drought phenomena in Calabria between the Middle Ages and the modern age: the contribution of ecclesiastical and hagiographical sources, Massimo Bidotti (University of Calabria, Italy)
• 10:40 Drought in Late Medieval England. Its impact on agriculture and its role in the formation of major plague waves, Kathleen Pribyl (University of East Anglia, United Kingdom)

11:00 – 11:20 Coffee Break

Session 2: Narrative Sources for Reconstructing Droughts(Chair: Sara Kipfer)

• 11:20 1473: Three Seasons of Heat and Drought in Europe,  Chantal Camenisch (University of Bern, Switzerland)
• 11:40 Droughts in the Czech Lands from AD 1501,
  Rudolf Brázdil (Czech Academy of Sciences and Masaryk University, Czech Republic), Miroslav Trnka (Czech Academy of Sciences and Mendel University, Czech Republic), Petr Dobrovolný (Czech Academy of Sciences and Masaryk University, Czech Republic), Ladislava Řezníčková (Czech Academy of Sciences and Masaryk University, Czech Republic), Oldřich Kotyza (Regional Museum, Litoměřice, Czech Republic), Hubert Valášek (Masaryk University, Czech Republic)
• 12:00 “The season has been an unusually dry one”: perspectives on 19^thcentury drought in southern Africa in different historical source types, 
  David J. Nash (University of Brighton, United Kingdom), Georgina H. Endfield (University of Liverpool, United Kingdom), Kathleen Pribyl (University of Brighton, United Kingdom), Jørgen Klein (Hedmark University College, Norway), Stefan W. Grab (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa), George C.D. Adamson (King's College London, United Kingdom)
• 12 :20 18^thcentury droughts in Portugal, 
  Marcelo Fragoso (University of Lisboa, Portugal), Maria de Garcia Dias Carraça (University of Lisboa and University of Évora, Portugal), Maria João Alcoforado (University of Lisboa, Portugal)
• 12:40 The weather behind the words. New methodologies for integrated analysis of drought over the long run, 
  Salvador Gil-Guirado (University of Murcia, Spain), Jose Antonio Espín-Sanchez (Yale University, USA), Mariano Barriendos (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch Break

Session 3: Narrative Sources for Reconstructing Droughts(Chair:Kathleen Pribyl)

• 14:00 Low waters, a complex indicator for climate history. Material and methods for evaluating the man-induced component of water shortages (late 18^th- early 20^thcentury)
  Nicolas Jacob-Rousseau (University of Lyon 2, France), Oldrich Navratil (University of Lyon 2, France), Éric Sauquet (IRSTEA, Villeurbanne, France), Jean-Philippe Vidal (IRSTEA, Villeurbanne, France)
• 14:20 Old and new drought classification methodologies in the Iberian Peninsula (16^th-20^thcenturies) 
  Mariano Barriendos (University of Barcelona, Spain), Salvador Gil Guirado (University of Murcia, Spain)
• 14:40 Comparative views on the North American Dust Bowl during the 1930’s, 
  Martine Tabeaud (University of Paris Panthéon Sorbonne, France), Alexis Metzger (University of Strasbourg, France)
• 15:00 Droughts in historical times in Polish territory, 
  Danuta Limanowka (Institute of Meteorology and Water Management - National Research InstitutePaństwowy Instytut Badawczy, Poland), Radoslaw Doktor (Institute of Meteorology and Water Management - National Research InstitutePaństwowy Instytut Badawczy, Poland)

 15:20 - 15:50 Coffee break

Session 4: Past Variability of Droughts(Chair:Chantal Camenisch)

• 15:50 Keynote 2: “DRIeR - Drought reconstructions, impacts, processes and resilience since 1500 for the German Southwest, 
  Rüdiger Glaser (University of Freiburg, Germany), Iso Himmelsbach (University of Freiburg, Germany), Annette Bösmeier (University of Freiburg, Germany)
• 16:20 Meteorological approach for some warm and dry years of the first half of the 19^thcentury, Nicolas Jacob-Rousseau (University of Lyon 2, France)
• 16:40 Short-term fluctuations of periods with consecutive dry days in the context of centennial variability in the Eastern Carpathians foreland Dariia Kholiavchuk (Yurii Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, Ukraine)
• 17:00 Ensemble reconstruction of spatio-temporal extreme low-flow events in France since 1871, 
  Laurie Caillouet (IRSTEA, Villeurbanne, France), Jean-Philippe Vidal (IRSTEA, Villeurbanne, France), Eric Sauquet (IRSTEA, Villeurbanne, France), Alexandre Devers (IRSTEA, Villeurbanne, France ), Benjamin Graff (Compagnie Nationale du Rhône (CNR), Lyon, France).

17:20-17:45 Discussion

19:00 Guided Tour through City of Strasbourg

20:00 Joint Dinner in the historic centre of Strasbourg (at own costs)

Day 2 – FRIDAY 2^ndJune 2017

 08:30 - 9:00 Coffee

Session 5: Past Variability of Droughts. Special Session (Great East Region, France)

(Chair:Nicolas Jacob-Rousseau, tbc)

• 9:00 Variability and spatial extent of drought(s) at the beginning of Antiquity in North-East France. Contribution of soil archives to scarce narrative data.  Anne Gebhardt (University of Strasbourg, INRAP Grand Est, France), Vincent Robin (University of Lorraine, France)
• 9:20 Droughts and low flows in the Mosel river catchment since the middle of the 19th century,  Claire Delus (University of Lorraine, France), Didier François (University of Lorraine, France)
• 9:40 Historic droughts in the Upper Rhine Valley (16th-20th centuries), Emmanuel Garnier (University of Franche-Comté, France)
• 10:00 “Not even a frog would be able to find a puddle of water” - frequency and magnitude of historic droughts in Alsace,  Alexis Metzger (University of Strasbourg, France),  Carmen de Jong (University of Strasbourg, France)

 10:20 – 10:40 Coffee Break

Session 6: Adaptation and resilience to droughts(Chair:Maria de Garcia Dias Carraça)

• 10:40 Keynote 3: Vulnerability and resilience to droughts from narrative sources (12th – 14th centuries),  Thomas Labbé (University of Burgundy, France)
• 11:10 Droughts and societies in Western France during the Little Ice Age (XIV^th-XVIII^thcenturies), Emmanuelle Athimon (University of Nantes, France)
• 11:30 Three centuries of vulnerability and adaptation to drought in the Zambezi-Save area of southern Africa, 1500-1830, Matthew Hannaford (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
• 11:50 Long-term changes in water governance regimes and drought adaptation. A case study in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona, NE Spain (1600-1870s),
  Mar Grau-Satorras (Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain), Iago Otero (Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain), Erik Gómez-Baggethun(Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain), Victoria Reyes-García (Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain)
• 12:10 Past drought management strategies of Mediterranean societies: the case of Marseille and the Lower Provence at the end of the Little Ice Age (1700-1850, Southeastern France) 
  Nicolas Maughan(University of Aix-Marseille, France), Georges Pichard(University of Aix-Marseille, France),
• 12:30 Analysis of historic droughts in the UK: a systems-based study of drivers, impacts and their interactions, 
  Jamie Hannaford (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, United Kingdom), John Bloomfield (British Geological Survey, Wallingford, United Kingdom), Ian Holman (Cranfield University, United Kingdom), Bettina Lange (University of Oxford, United Kingdom), Ralph Ledbetter (HR Wallingford, United Kingdom), Mark McCarthy and Steven Wade (Met Office, Exeter, United Kingdom), Tony McEnery (University of Lancaster, United Kingdom), Rebecca Pearce (University of Exeter, United Kingdom) the Historic Droughts Project Team

 13:00 - 14:00 Lunch Break

Session 7: Adaptation and resilience to droughts(Chair: Alexis Metzger)

• 14:00 ‘Hungry Franks on dry land’? An interdisciplinary approach to the famine of 793 CE,  Stephan Ebert (Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany)
• 14:20 Droughts as a Trigger of Subsequent Locust Invasions? The Cases of the 1470s and 1540s, Christian Rohr (University of Bern, Switzerland)
• 14:40 Knowledge and characterization of droughts in the West of France, Jérémy Desarthe (University of Caen – Normandie, France)
• 15:00 The 1904 Great Drought Episode in Austrian Galicia: adaptation and resilience in a poor Central European rural society, Jawad Daheur (University of Strasbourg, France)
• 15:20 The Impact of the West European Drought 1975-6, John Martin (De Montfort University Leicester, United Kingdom)
• 15:40 The Memory of Droughts – From Written Sources into Tambora´s Digital Sustainability. The Near and Middle East Case Study, 
  Michael Kahle (University of Freiburg, Germany), Rüdiger Glaser (University of Freiburg, Germany), Rafael Hologa (University of Freiburg, Germany)

16:00 – 16:20 Coffee break

16:20 Panel discussion:(Chair: Carmen de Jong)

Learning from Historical Adaptation and Resilience to Droughts – Where to go from now?

• Murray Biedler (UNESCO Liaison Officer, Hydrology and Water Scarcity, Brussels, tbc)
• Christian Pfister (University of Bern)
• Rüdiger Glaser (University of Freiburg)
• Thomas Labbé (University of Burgundy, France)

17 :00 End of Conference