scholarly journals Drought Assessment by a Short-/Long-Term Composited Drought Index in the Upper Huaihe River Basin, China

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meixiu Yu ◽  
Xiaolong Liu ◽  
Li Wei ◽  
Qiongfang Li ◽  
Jianyun Zhang ◽  
...  

Accurate and reliable drought monitoring is of primary importance for drought mitigation and reduction of social-ecological vulnerability. The aim of the paper was to propose a multiscale composited drought index (CDI) which could be widely used for drought monitoring and early warning in China. In the study, the upper Huaihe River basin above the Xixian gauge station, which has been hit by severe droughts frequently in recent decades, was selected as the case study site. The newly built short-term/long-term CDI comprehensively considered three natural forms of drought (meteorological, hydrological, and agricultural) by selection of different variables that are related to each drought type. The short-term/long-term CDI was developed using the Principle Component Analysis of related drought components. The thresholds of the short-term/long-term CDI were determined according to frequency statistics of different drought indices. Finally, the feasibility of the two CDI was investigated against the self-calibrating Palmer drought severity index, the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index, and the historical drought records. The results revealed that the short-term/long-term CDI could capture the onset, severity, and persistence of drought events very well with the former being better at identifying the dynamic evolution of drought condition and the latter better at judging the changing trend of drought over a long time period.

Author(s):  
M. Yu ◽  
Q. Li ◽  
G. Lu ◽  
H. Wang ◽  
P. Li

Abstract. Accurate and reliable drought monitoring is of primary importance for drought mitigation and reduction of social-ecological vulnerability. The aim of the paper was to propose a short-term/long-term composited drought index (CDI) which could be widely used for drought monitoring and early warning in China. In the study, the upper Huaihe River basin above the Xixian gauge station, which has been hit by severe droughts frequently in recent decades, was selected as the case study site. The short-term CDI was developed by the Principle Component Analysis of the self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (sc-PDSI), the 1- and 3-month Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), Z Index (ZIND), the Soil Moisture Index (SMI) with the long-term CDI being formulated by use of the self-calibrating Palmer Hydrology Drought Index (sc-PHDI), the 6-, 12-, 18- and 24-month SPEI, the Standardized Streamflow Index (SSI), the SMI. The sc-PDSI, the PHDI, the ZIND, the SPEI on a monthly time scale were calculated based on the monthly air temperature and precipitation, and the monthly SMI and SSI were computed based on the simulated soil moisture and runoff by the distributed Xinanjiang model. The thresholds of the short-term/long-term CDI were determined according to frequency statistics of different drought indices. Finally, the feasibility of the two CDIs was investigated against the scPDSI, the SPEI and the historical drought records. The results revealed that the short-term/long-term CDI could capture the onset, severity, persistence of drought events very well with the former being better at identifying the dynamic evolution of drought condition while the latter better at judging the changing trend of drought over a long time period.


Author(s):  
Q. Li ◽  
M. Zeng ◽  
H. Wang ◽  
P. Li ◽  
K. Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract. The Huaihe River Basin having China's highest population density (662 persons per km2) lies in a transition zone between the climates of North and South China, and is thus prone to drought. Therefore, the paper aims to develop an appropriate drought assessment approach for drought assessment in the Huaihe River basin, China. Based on the Principal Component Analysis of precipitation, evapotranspiration, soil moisture and runoff, the three latter variables of which were obtained by use of the Xin'anjiang model, a new multivariate drought index (MDI) was formulated, and its thresholds were determined by use of cumulative distribution function. The MDI, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (sc-PDSI) time series on a monthly scale were computed and compared during 1988, 1999/2000 and 2001 drought events. The results show that the MDI exhibited certain advantages over the sc-PDSI and the SPI in monitoring drought evolution. The MDI formulated by this paper could provide a scientific basis for drought mitigation and management, and references for drought assessment elsewhere in China.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tianliang Jiang ◽  
Xiaoling Su

<p>Although the concept of ecological drought was first defined by the Science for Nature and People Partnership (SNAPP) in 2016, there remains no widely accepted drought index for monitoring ecological drought. Therefore, this study constructed a new ecological drought monitoring index, the standardized ecological water deficit index (SEWDI). The SEWDI is based on the difference between ecological water requirements and consumption, referred to as the standardized precipitation index (SPI) method, which was used to monitor ecological drought in Northwestern China (NWRC). The performances of the SEWDI and four widely-used drought indices [standardized root soil moisture index (SSI), self-calibrated Palmer drought index (scPDSI), standardized precipitation-evaporation drought index (SPEI), and SPI) in monitoring ecological drought were evaluated through comparing the Pearson correlations between these indices and the standardized normalized difference vegetation index (SNDVI) under different time scales, wetness, and water use efficiencies (WUEs) of vegetation. Finally, the rotational empirical orthogonal function (REOF) was used to decompose the SEWDI at a 12-month scale in the NWRC during 1982–2015 to obtain five ecological drought regions. The characteristics of ecological drought in the NWRC, including intensity, duration, and frequency, were extracted using run theory. The results showed that the performance of the SEWDI in monitoring ecological drought was highest among the commonly-used drought indices evaluated under different time scales [average correlation coefficient values (r) between SNDVI and drought indices: SEWDI<sub></sub>= 0.34, SSI<sub></sub>= 0.24, scPDSI<sub></sub>= 0.23, SPI<sub></sub>= 0.20, SPEI<sub></sub>= 0.18), and the 12-month-scale SEWDI was largely unaffected by wetness and WUE. In addition, the results of the monitoring indicated that serious ecological droughts in the NWRC mainly occurred in 1982–1986, 1990–1996, and 2005–2010, primarily in regions I, II, and V, regions II, and IV, and in region III, IV, and V, respectively. This study provides a robust approach for quantifying ecological drought severity across natural vegetation areas and scientific evidence for governmental decision makers.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 901-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hsin-Fu Yeh

Abstract Numerous drought index assessment methods have been developed to investigate droughts. This study proposes a more comprehensive assessment method integrating two drought indices. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Streamflow Drought Index (SDI) are employed to establish an integrated drought assessment method to study the trends and characteristics of droughts in southern Taiwan. The overall SPI and SDI values and the spatial and temporal distributions of droughts within a given year (November to October) revealed consistent general trends. Major droughts occurred in the periods of 1979–1980, 1992–1993, 1994–1995, and 2001–2003. According to the results of the Mann–Kendall trend test and the Theil–Sen estimator analysis, the streamflow data from the Sandimen gauging station in the Ailiao River Basin showed a 30% decrease, suggesting increasing aridity between 1964 and 2003. Hence, in terms of water resources management, special attention should be given to the Ailiao River Basin. The integrated analysis showed different types of droughts occurring in different seasons, and the results are in good agreement with the climatic characteristics of southern Taiwan. This study suggests that droughts cannot be explained fully by the application of a single drought index. Integrated analysis using multiple indices is required.


2013 ◽  
Vol 433-435 ◽  
pp. 1813-1816
Author(s):  
Jing Wen Xu ◽  
Peng Wang ◽  
Jun Fang Zhao ◽  
Shuang Liu

On the basis of previous work, this paper aims to build several proper drought indices based on the basic computation for the band information of passive microwave remote sensing AMSR-E data in Huaihe river basin. Compared with measured soil moisture, optimal drought indices have been selected to explore the spatio-temporal variation laws of drought conditions and its impact factors. The results indicate that there are satisfactory negative correlations between MPDIs (Microwave Polarization Difference Index) and observed soil moisture on the whole, which means the more negative the index is, the more serious the drought will be. Besides, MPDIs at frequency 69GHz and 187GHz calculated by AMSR-E brightness temperature data are much closer to the variation trend of soil moisture than those obtained from other bands.


2013 ◽  
Vol 397-400 ◽  
pp. 2503-2506
Author(s):  
Rui Wang ◽  
Jing Wen Xu ◽  
Dan Wang ◽  
Xing Mei Xie ◽  
Peng Wang

On the basis of previous work, this paper aims to build several proper drought indices based on passive microwave remote sensing AMSR-E data in Huaihe River Basin. Compared with measured soil moisture, optimal drought indices have been selected to explore the spatio-temporal variation of drought conditions. The results indicate that there are satisfactory negative correlations between MPDIs (Microwave Polarization Index) and observed soil moisture. Moreover, MPDIs calculated by bands of 69GHz and 187GHz are much closer to variation trend of soil moisture than those obtained by other bands.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 3622
Author(s):  
Bakkiyalakshmi Palanisamy ◽  
Balaji Narasimhan ◽  
Sabu Paul ◽  
Raghavan Srinivasan ◽  
Winai Wangpimool ◽  
...  

Departures in precipitation from the normal are the cause of the onset of agricultural drought. In this study, we aim to identify extreme precipitation deficits using an index called Percent Normal (PN). We applied the proposed PN index to the agriculturally productive Mekong River Basin (MRB) to evaluate the propagation of precipitation deficits into agricultural drought based on the change in slope and mean of the precipitation, soil moisture and evapotranspiration anomalies. The results of the study showed the proposed PN index identified historical droughts in the years 1992, 1997–1998 and 2000–2006 in MRB; of these, 1992 was shown to be the longest drought, which lasted from the 43rd week (October) of 1991 to the 49th week (December) of 1994. The short-term but extreme drought was identified to occur in 2005 with below-normal precipitation that lasted for more than a year. An immediate effect of precipitation deficit was observed in evapotranspiration (ET) and soil water for agricultural (Thailand) and forested regions (Parts of Cambodia) of the basin with <5 weeks lag. We conclude that the drought indices adopted in this study are suitable to identify the small and long-term drought events, which will facilitate the development of a drought-resilient agricultural production system.


Author(s):  
A. Dare ◽  
E. J. Zakka ◽  
Maikano Samson ◽  
A. O. Afolabi ◽  
S. O. Okechalu ◽  
...  

Drought is defined as the lack of adequate precipitation, either rain or snow that causes reduced soil moisture or groundwater, diminished streamflow, crop damage and a general water shortage. The objective of this study focuses on meteorological and hydrological drought monitoring in river Kaduna catchment area. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI) drought indices were used to characterize meteorological drought while Streamflow Drought Index (SDI) was used for hydrological drought monitoring for a period of 34 years (1967 – 2001). DrinC software, a drought indices calculator, was used for the calculation of SPI, RDI, and SDI respectively. The drought severity classification based on meteorological and hydrological drought indices gave 33% and 37% drought conditions period with the year 1967 – 2001. Based on these indexes, the drought characteristics of the catchment area were investigated by analyzing meteorological data from 1967 to 2001. The results of this analysis show that more non-drought/normal conditions were predominant than drought conditions. During the period under study (34 years), only one-year return period of extreme drought condition.


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