Despite the sometimes heavy rainfall this summer, forest experts have not given the all-clear for the Hessian forests after the enormous damage in recent years.

"The rain helps - but only to a limited extent," said a spokeswoman for the HessenForst regional office for the German press agency.

"Above all, our spring plantings benefit from the water." The deeper soil reservoirs at a depth of 1.80 meters are still not filled, especially in the north of Hesse - "it would have to rain for at least the next three months," said the spokeswoman .

The deeper tree roots would still be in the dry.

The forest particularly benefits from slow and steady rain.

Heavy rain events, on the other hand, would not help much because most of the water runs off above ground in these cases.

Problem bark beetle

With a look at the bark beetle, there is a slight improvement: “With the rain also come cooler temperatures.

This does not harm the bark beetle directly, but it also does not lead to several generations a year, as we have seen in recent years, ”said the HessenForst spokeswoman.

The persistently high temperatures in recent years would have led to four generations of bark beetles, in other words, a real mass increase.

But there were and still are other harmful influences, because the trees are still suffering from drought stress, as the spokeswoman said.

"It is no different for us humans: If the immune system is weakened, for example because we eat incorrectly or insufficiently, diseases and pathogens have an easy time of it."

From the point of view of Andreas Marx, head of the German Drought Monitor at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig, the drought situation in Hesse is much more relaxed this year than in the past three years. One speaks of drought when the soil moisture falls below the value that was only reached in 20 percent of the years between 1951 and 2015. A look at the drought monitor for Hesse shows that there is currently only such low soil moisture at certain points, for example in parts of the districts of Waldeck-Frankenberg, Hersfeld-Rotenburg and Marburg-Biedenkopf as well as the Schwalm-Eder district and Werra-Meißner district.

According to Marx, the overall positive development is not related to the current rainfall.

"This year, the drought began to resolve in January," explained the drought researcher.

On the one hand, the winter brought slightly above-average rainfall.

But the more important factor was the very cold spring.

“The low level of evaporation, which normally only occurs in winter, continued throughout spring.” This positive effect on soil moisture continued into the meteorological summer.

Problem infiltration

According to Marx, the current rainfall only helps to a limited extent in resolving the drought.

Because the upper soil layers are already soaked with water, the precipitation falls faster than it can seep in and the water runs off.

The result is flooding despite dry subsoils.

According to Marx, the regional drought is related to the amount of precipitation and the nature of the soil.

Sandy soils can absorb water very well and store it poorly, while loamy soils can store water well, but absorb less.

"It just takes longer for the drought to resolve."