scholarly journals Mapping the spatial and temporal variation of agricultural and meteorological drought using geospatial techniques, Ethiopia

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abebe Senamaw ◽  
Solomon Addisu ◽  
K. V. Suryabhagavan

Abstract Background Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing play an important role for near real time monitoring of drought condition over large areas. The aim of this study was to assess spatial and temporal variation of agricultural and meteorological drought using temporal image of eMODIS NDVI based vegetation condition index (VCI) and standard precipitation index (SPI) from the year 2000 to 2016. To validate the strength of drought indices correlation analysis was made between VCI and crop yield anomaly as well as standardized precipitation index (SPI) and crop yield anomaly. Results The results revealed that the year 2009 and 2015 was drought years while the 2001 and 2007 were wet years. There was also a good correlation between NDVI and rainfall (r = 0.71), VCI and crop yield anomaly (0.72), SPI and crop yield anomaly (0.74). Frequency of metrological and agricultural drought was compiled by using historical drought intensity map. The result shows that there was complex and local scale variation in frequency of drought events in the study period. There was also no year without drought in many parts of the study area. Combined drought risk map also showed that 8%, 56% and 35% of the study area were vulnerable to very severe, severe and moderate drought condition respectively. Conclusions In conclusion, the study area is highly vulnerable to agricultural and meteorological drought. There was also no year without drought in many parts of the study area. Thus besides mapping drought vulnerable areas, integrating socio-economic data for better understand other vulnerable factors were recommended.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abebe Senamaw ◽  
Solomon Addisu ◽  
K.V. Suryabhagavan

Abstract Background Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing play an important role for near real time monitoring of drought condition over large areas. The objective of this study was to assess spatial and temporal variation of agricultural and metrological drought using temporal image of eMODIS NDVI based vegetation condition index (VCI) and standard precipitation index (SPI). To validate the strength of drought indices correlation analysis was made between VCI and crop yield anomaly as well as SPI and crop yield anomaly. The results revealed that the year 2009 and 2015 were drought years while the 2001 and 2007 were wet years. There was also a good correlation between NDVI and rainfall (r=0.71), VCI and crop yield anomaly (0.72), SPI and crop yield anomaly (0.74). Frequency of metrological and agricultural drought was compiled by using historical drought intensity map. ResultThe result shows that there was complex and local scale variation in frequency of drought events in the study period. There was also no year without drought in many parts of the study area. Combined drought risk map also showed that 8%, 56%, 35% and 8% of study area were vulnerable to very severe, severe and moderate drought condition respectively. Conclusion In conclusion, the study area is highly vulnerable to agricultural and meteorological drought. Thus besides mapping drought vulnerable areas, integrating socioeconomic data for better understand other vulnerable factors were recommended.


2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 67 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Peña-Gallardo ◽  
S. R. Gámiz-Fortís ◽  
Y. Castro-Diez ◽  
M. J. Esteban-Parra

The aim of this paper is the analysis of the detection and evolution of droughts occurred in Andalusia for the period 1901-2012, by applying three different drought indices: the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), the Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and the Standardized Drought-Precipitation Index (IESP), computed for three time windows from the initial period 1901-2012. This analysis has been carried out after a preliminary study of precipitation trends with the intention of understanding the precipitation behaviour, because this climatic variable is one of the most important in the study of extreme events. The specific objectives of this study are: (1) to investigate and characterize the meteorological drought events, mainly the most important episodes in Andalusia; (2) to provide a global evaluation of the capacities of the three different considered indices in order to characterize the drought in a heterogeneous climatically territory; and (3) to describe the temporal behaviour of precipitation and drought indices series in order to establish the general characteristics of their evolution in Andalusia. The results have shown that not all the indices respond similarly identifying the intensity and duration of dry periods in this kind of region where geographical and climatic variability is one of the main elements to be considered.


2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 1397-1408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongshuo Wang ◽  
Jeffrey C. Rogers ◽  
Darla K. Munroe

Abstract Soil moisture shortages adversely affecting agriculture are significantly associated with meteorological drought. Because of limited soil moisture observations with which to monitor agricultural drought, characterizing soil moisture using drought indices is of great significance. The relationship between commonly used drought indices and soil moisture is examined here using Chinese surface weather data and calculated station-based drought indices. Outside of northeastern China, surface soil moisture is more affected by drought indices having shorter time scales while deep-layer soil moisture is more related on longer index time scales. Multiscalar drought indices work better than drought indices from two-layer bucket models. The standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) works similarly or better than the standardized precipitation index (SPI) in characterizing soil moisture at different soil layers. In most stations in China, the Z index has a higher correlation with soil moisture at 0–5 cm than the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI), which in turn has a higher correlation with soil moisture at 90–100-cm depth than the Z index. Soil bulk density and soil organic carbon density are the two main soil properties affecting the spatial variations of the soil moisture–drought indices relationship. The study may facilitate agriculture drought monitoring with commonly used drought indices calculated from weather station data.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruja Mansorian ◽  
Mohammad Zare ◽  
Guy Schumann

<p>In this study, long-term time series of precipitation data were used for determining the drought condition using the standard precipitation index (SPI) for 3, 6 and 12 month time scales. The indicators were calculated with two methods: a) using a gamma distribution and transforming the probability of occurrence to standard normal distribution, b) using the non-parametric plotting position method. Then, the SPI values for two consequent years 2013-14 and 2014-15 were extracted from data to study on meteorological drought. The SPI index calculations showed that the first year had near normal, whereas the second year had extreme drought condition. In parallel, 34 Landsat 8 satellite images were downloaded during the indicated time period to determine normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and vegetation condition index (VCI) as agricultural drought indices. The mean values of VCI for each month were considered as representative value for drought condition of the area. When the agricultural and meteorological drought indices were determined, the correlation coefficient (r) were calculated for finding the relation between these types of droughts. the results show that the highest correlation between SPI-3,6 and 12-month time scales and VCI occurred in 4, 2 and 4 months lag time respectively, with corresponding r value of 0.67, 0.65 and 0.69. The best agreement between these indices with calculated lag time proves the hypothesis that agricultural drought occurs after meteorological drought. Therefore, the results could be applied by farmers to plan an appropriate irrigation scheduling for upcoming droughts, specially, in arid and semi-arid areas. It could be concluded that for having suitable planning in water scarcity condition, understanding the situation helps water planners have better insight about management polices to minimize the effects of this natural hazard on human. To sum up, finding a relation between different types of droughts is helpful for monitoring, predicting and detecting droughts to better prepare for drought phenomena and to minimize losses</p>


2009 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradfield Lyon ◽  
Lareef Zubair ◽  
Vidhura Ralapanawe ◽  
Zeenas Yahiya

Abstract In regions of climatic heterogeneity, finescale assessment of drought risk is needed for policy making and drought management, mitigation, and adaptation. The relationship between drought relief payments (a proxy for drought risk) and meteorological drought indicators is examined through a retrospective analysis for Sri Lanka (1960–2000) based on records of district-level drought relief payments and a dense network of 284 rainfall stations. The standardized precipitation index and a percent-of-annual-average index for rainfall accumulated over 3, 6, 9, and 12 months were used, gridded to a spatial resolution of 10 km. An encouraging correspondence was identified between the spatial distribution of meteorological drought occurrence and historical drought relief payments at the district scale. Time series of drought indices averaged roughly over the four main climatic zones of Sri Lanka showed statistically significant (p < 0.01) relationships with the occurrence of drought relief. The 9-month cumulative drought index provided the strongest relationships overall, although 6- and 12-month indicators provided generally similar results. Some cases of appreciable drought without corresponding relief payments could be attributed to fiscal pressures, as during the 1970s. Statistically significant relationships between drought indicators and relief payments point to the potential utility of meteorological drought assessments for disaster risk management. In addition, the study provides an empirical approach to testing which meteorological drought indicators bear a statistically significant relationship to drought relief across a wide range of tropical climates.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 6757-6789
Author(s):  
W. Chen ◽  
Z. Shao ◽  
L. K. Tiong

Abstract. Drought caused the most widespread damage in China, making up over 50 % of the total affected area nationwide in recent decades. In the paper, a Standardized Precipitation Index-based (SPI-based) drought risk study is conducted using historical rainfall data of 19 weather stations in Shandong province, China. Kernel density based method is adopted to carry out the risk analysis. Comparison between the bivariate Gaussian kernel density estimation (GKDE) and diffusion kernel density estimation (DKDE) are carried out to analyze the effect of drought intensity and drought duration. The results show that DKDE is relatively more accurate without boundary-leakage. Combined with the GIS technique, the drought risk is presented which reveals the spatial and temporal variation of agricultural droughts for corn in Shandong. The estimation provides a different way to study the occurrence frequency and severity of drought risk from multiple perspectives.


2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mladen Milanovic ◽  
Milan Gocic ◽  
Slavisa Trajkovic

Drought represents a combined heat-precipitation extreme and has become an increasingly frequent phenomenon in recent years. In order to access the entire analysis of drought, it is necessary to include the analysis of several types of drought. In this paper, impacts of meteorological and agricultural drought were analyzed across the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Agricultural Rainfall Index (ARI) on the territory of Serbia for the period from 1980 to 2010. For both types of drought, year 2000 is notable as the year when most of the observed stations had the highest drought intensity. It was found that meteorological drought for year 2000 has a higher intensity in the central and southeastern parts of the country, as well as in the north. Of all the stations, the highest intensity of meteorological drought was observed at Loznica station in 1989. Agricultural drought in 2000 had the lowest intensity in western Serbia.


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 00082
Author(s):  
Justyna Kubicz

The paper presents the initial studies with the aim to assess the possibility to apply of Standardized Precipitation Index SPI to monitor drought in surface and groundwaters. The fact that data about precipitation are highly available allows for precise monitoring of the periods of occurrence and intensification of meteorological drought by determining the standardized SPI index. The evaluation of current water deficits in surface water courses and groundwaters is very difficult due to the fact that the measurement network is relatively scarce. In order to apply SPI to monitor hydrological and hydrogeological drought, it is required to assess the significance and level of the correlation between drought indices in the test area and then to calculate the probability of correct determination of drought in surface and groundwaters with use of SPI.


Water Policy ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 865-886 ◽  
Author(s):  
Furat A. M. Al-Faraj ◽  
Miklas Scholz ◽  
Dimitris Tigkas ◽  
Martino Boni

There is growing concern in Iraq about the inefficiency of reactive drought management practices. Corresponding actions are largely characterized as emergency-based responses that treat the symptoms of drought rather than consider the vulnerability components associated with impacts. The Diyala watershed shared between Iraq and Iran has been used as an example transboundary river basin marked by ineffectiveness of drought management. The standardized precipitation index and the reconnaissance drought index were used to determine the historical meteorological drought episodes and analysis indicated climate change-induced alterations in the area. Spatiotemporal drought maps were drawn, which can be used for the identification of drought prone areas and assist with proactive planning. This paper discusses the underlying causes of the impairments of drought management policies, and the challenges and difficulties accompanying the governance of drought in Iraq. Given the influence of climate change and the upstream anthropogenic pressures, the time has come to adopt a gradual nation-wide transition step to drought risk planning incorporating a management approach at the transboundary scale. Moreover, the institutional and technical water vulnerability components associated with drought management should be considered in an integrated manner. The paper presents a generic technical template to support decision-makers in drought risk management.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (S1) ◽  
pp. 189-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koyel Sur ◽  
M. M. Lunagaria

Abstract Drought is a complex hazard which directly affects the water balance of any region. It impacts agricultural, ecological and socioeconomical spheres. It is a global concern. The occurrence of drought is triggered by climatic phenomena which cannot be eliminated. However, its effect can be well managed if actual spatio-temporal information related to crop status influenced by drought is available to decision-makers. This study attempted to assess the efficiency of remote sensing products from space sensors for monitoring the spatio-temporal status of meteorological drought in conjunction with impact on vegetation condition and crop yield. Time series (2000–2019) datasets of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) were used to compute Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and MODIS (MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) was used to compute Vegetation Condition Index (VCI). Association between SPI and VCI was explored. YAI was calculated from the statistical data records. Final observations are that the agricultural crop yield changed as per the climate variability specific to location. The study indicates drought indices derived from remote sensing give a synoptic view because of the course resolution of the satellite images. It does not reveal the precise relationship to the small-scale crop yield. Remote sensing can be an effective way to monitor and understand the dynamics of the drought and agriculture pattern over any region.


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