###### Abstract
A strong rainfall deficit was registered for the north and central-east of Germany, where summer precipitation sums were lowest or second lowest since 1881, while the negative anomalies were not as strong for southern and north-eastern regions [13]. This meteorological drought resulted in an agricultural drought in large parts of Germany. In reaction to the adverse effect of drought and heat conditions on the agricultural sector in 2018 in Germany, federal aid payments of 340 million Euros were warranted to farmers with at least 30 percent of yield loss [15]. However, so far, the characteristics of the agricultural drought in Germany in 2018 have not yet been analyzed based on earth observation data, and its patterns have not yet been compared to other drought years. Within this study, we assess the condition of the vegetation in 2018, compare it to other years within the last two decades, and reveal interesting patterns using satellite earth observation data. In previous studies, drought and heat conditions in Europe were analyzed using climatological, vegetation and hydrological data partly based on satellite earth observation, which enables extensive investigations over varying land cover and ecosystem types. In particular, with regard to agricultural droughts, the examination of satellite-based vegetation indices has become an important method as no field measurements, interpolation, or large-scale modelling are required. For investigating vegetation status under extreme conditions, several medium-resolution satellite data sets (e.g., AVHRR, Spot-VEGFATION, MERIS, MODIS, and SeaWIFS) were used in previous studies [16; 17; 18; 19; 20; 21; 22; 23; 24]. When investigating the influence of climate extremes on agriculture, the focus lies on the assessment of the reaction of plants toward extreme climate conditions. The reaction of plants is majorly linked to ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, and economic factors, such as yield loss. In previous studies, extreme conditions of plant properties were already investigated using satellite-based proxies of vegetation vitality and/or productivity. The most prominent investigated parameters in this regard are vegetation indices, such as NDVI [16; 17; 18; 21; 23], and modelled productivity estimates, such as fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR) [19; 25], net primary productivity (NPP) [10], and gross primary productivity (GPP) [20; 22; 26]. Previous studies analyzing the reaction of plants toward climate extremes found temperate regions to show rapid responses of vegetation vitality and productivity [21; 23]. In addition, it was revealed in a previous study that terrestrial ecosystems in the mid latitudes exhibit a poor resilience toward droughts with more than 60 days of recovery time [20]. To our best knowledge, none of the presented indices and parameters was identified as being optimal for all land cover and ecosystem types, and they are often consistent among each other. Additionally, most of these studies used meteorological parameters as indicators for drought, like Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) [17; 18; 23], Standardized Precipitation Evaporation Index (SPEI) [21], or soil moisture [22; 27], and investigated the reaction of the vegetation during their previously detected climate extremes. However, extreme vegetation reactions and climate extremes often have a non-linear relationship, as extreme reactions within the vegetation are possibly induced by an accumulation or specific combination of climatic conditions that would not be extreme when considered separately [28; 29]. Therefore, within this study, we base the investigation on the vegetation reaction (impact-based) [19] and focus solely on the dynamics of vegetation condition in Germany within the last 19 years. In order to investigate vegetation stress in Germany within the past two decades, we use a robust and straightforward approach to detect temporal and spatial patterns of vegetation condition derived by earth observation data.