scholarly journals Influence of multi-decadal land use, irrigation practices and climate on riparian corridors across the Upper Missouri River Headwaters Basin, Montana

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie K. Vanderhoof ◽  
Jay R. Christensen ◽  
Laurie C. Alexander

Abstract. The Upper Missouri River Headwaters Basin (36 400 km2) depends on its river corridors to support irrigated agriculture and world-class trout fisheries. We evaluated trends (1984–2016) in riparian wetness, an indicator of riparian condition, in peak irrigation months (June, July, August) for 158 km2 of riparian area across the basin using the Landsat Normalized Difference Wetness Index (NDWI). We found that 8 of the 19 riparian reaches across the basin showed a significant drying trend over this period, including all three basin outlet reaches along the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin Rivers. The influence of upstream climate was quantified using per reach random forest regressions. Although much of the interannual variability was explained by climate, especially by drought indices and annual precipitation, the significant drying trends persisted in the NDWI-climate model residuals, indicating that trends were not entirely attributable to climate. Over the same period we documented a 506 % increase in center-pivot irrigation and an associated 39 % decrease in non-center pivot irrigation basin-wide. Riparian reaches with a drying trend had a greater shift towards center-pivot irrigation relative to riparian reaches without such a trend (p 

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 4269-4292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie K. Vanderhoof ◽  
Jay R. Christensen ◽  
Laurie C. Alexander

Abstract. The Upper Missouri River headwaters (UMH) basin (36 400 km2) depends on its river corridors to support irrigated agriculture and world-class trout fisheries. We evaluated trends (1984–2016) in riparian wetness, an indicator of the riparian condition, in peak irrigation months (June, July and August) for 158 km2 of riparian area across the basin using the Landsat normalized difference wetness index (NDWI). We found that 8 of the 19 riparian reaches across the basin showed a significant drying trend over this period, including all three basin outlet reaches along the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin rivers. The influence of upstream climate was quantified using per reach random forest regressions. Much of the interannual variability in the NDWI was explained by climate, especially by drought indices and annual precipitation, but the significant temporal drying trends persisted in the NDWI–climate model residuals, indicating that trends were not entirely attributable to climate. Over the same period we documented a basin-wide shift from 9 % of agriculture irrigated with center-pivot irrigation to 50 % irrigated with center-pivot irrigation. Riparian reaches with a drying trend had a greater increase in the total area with center-pivot irrigation (within reach and upstream from the reach) relative to riparian reaches without such a trend (p<0.05). The drying trend, however, did not extend to river discharge. Over the same period, stream gages (n=7) showed a positive correlation with riparian wetness (p<0.05) but no trend in summer river discharge, suggesting that riparian areas may be more sensitive to changes in irrigation return flows relative to river discharge. Identifying trends in riparian vegetation is a critical precursor for enhancing the resiliency of river systems and associated riparian corridors.


2011 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 771-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Ferreira ◽  
Joice H. de Toledo ◽  
Antonio A. A. Dantas ◽  
Rafael M. Pereira

Medium-resolution satellite images have been widely used for the identification and quantification of irrigated areas by center pivot. These areas, which present predominantly circular forms, can be easily identified by visual analyses of these images. In addition to identifying and quantifying areas irrigated by center pivot, other information that is associated to these areas is fundamental for producing cadastral maps. The goal of this work was to generate cadastral mapping of areas irrigated by center pivots in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, with the purpose of supplying information on irrigated agriculture. Using the satellite CBERS2B/CCD, images were used to identify and quantify irrigated areas and then associate these areas with a database containing information about: irrigated area, perimeter, municipality, path row, basin in which the pivot is located, and the date of image acquisition.3,781 center pivots systems were identified. The smallest area irrigated was 4.6 hectares and the largest one was 192.6 hectares. The total estimated value of irrigated area was 254,875 hectares. The largest number of center pivots appeared in the municipalities of Unaí and Paracatu, with 495 and 459 systems, respectively. Cadastral mapping is a very useful tool to assist and enhance information on irrigated agriculture in the State of Minas Gerais.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Tian ◽  
Baoqing Zhang ◽  
Pute Wu

Abstract. Drought indices are hard to balance in terms of versatility (effectiveness for multiple types of drought), flexibility of timescales, and inclusivity (to what extent they include all physical processes). A lack of consistent source data increases the difficulty of quantifying drought. Here, we present a global monthly drought dataset from 1948 to 2010 based on a multitype and multiscalar drought index, the standardized moisture anomaly index incorporating snow dynamics (SZIsnow), driven by systematic fields from an advanced data assimilation system. The proposed SZIsnow dataset includes different physical water‒energy processes, especially snow processes. Our evaluation of the dataset demonstrates its ability to distinguish different types of drought across different timescales. Our assessment also indicates that the dataset adequately captures droughts across different spatial scales. The consideration of snow processes improved the capability of SZIsnow, and the improvement is particularly evident over snow-covered high-latitude (e.g., Arctic region) and high-altitude areas (e.g., Tibetan Plateau). We found that 59.66 % of Earth's land area exhibited a drying trend between 1948 and 2010, and the remaining 40.34 % exhibited a wetting trend. Our results also show that the SZIsnow dataset successfully captured the large-scale drought events that occurred across the world; there were 525 drought events with an area larger than 500,000 square kilometers globally during the study period, of which nearly 70 % had a duration longer than 6 months. Therefore, this new drought dataset is well suited to monitoring, assessing, and characterizing drought, and can serve as a valuable resource for future drought studies.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evdokia Tapoglou ◽  
Anthi Vozinaki ◽  
Ioannis Tsanis

Frequency analysis on extreme hydrological and meteorological events under the effect of climate change is performed in the island of Crete. Data from Regional Climate Model simulations (RCMs) that follow three Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP8.5) are used in the analysis. The analysis was performed for the 1985–2100 time period, divided into three equal-duration time slices (1985–2010, 2025–2050, and 2075–2100). Comparison between the results from the three time slices for the different RCMs under different RCP scenarios indicate that drought events are expected to increase in the future. The meteorological and hydrological drought indices, relative Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Runoff index (SRI), are used to identify the number of drought events for each RCM. Results from extreme precipitation, extreme flow, meteorological and hydrological drought frequency analysis over Crete show that the impact of climate change on the magnitude of 100 years return period extreme events will also increase, along with the magnitude of extreme precipitation and flow events.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman Hohl ◽  
Ze Jiang ◽  
Minh Tue Vu ◽  
Srivatsan Vijayaraghavan ◽  
Shie-Yui Liong

PurposeExamine the usability of rainfall and temperature outputs of a regional climate model (RCM) and meteorological drought indices to develop a macro-level risk transfer product to compensate the government of Central Java, Indonesia, for drought-related disaster payments to rice farmers.Design/methodology/approachBased on 0.5° gridded rainfall and temperature data (1960–2015) and projections of the WRF-RCM (2016–2040), the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) are calculated for Central Java over different time spans. The drought indices are correlated to annual and seasonal rice production, based on which a weather index insurance structure is developed.FindingsThe six-month SPI correlates best with the wet season rice production, which generates most output in Central Java. The SPI time series reveals that drought severity increases in future years (2016–2040) and leads to higher payouts from the weather index structure compared to the historical period (1960–2015).Practical implicationsThe developed methodology in using SPI for historical and projected periods allows the development of weather index insurance in other regions which have a clear link between rainfall deficit and agricultural production volatility.Originality/valueMeteorological drought indices are a viable alternative for weather index insurance, which is usually based on rainfall amounts. RCM outputs provide valuable insights into future climate variability and drought risk and prolong the time series, which should result in more robust weather index insurance products.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 2341-2361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingyi Li ◽  
Jingqiu Mao ◽  
Arlene M. Fiore ◽  
Ronald C. Cohen ◽  
John D. Crounse ◽  
...  

Abstract. Widespread efforts to abate ozone (O3) smog have significantly reduced emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) over the past 2 decades in the Southeast US, a place heavily influenced by both anthropogenic and biogenic emissions. How reactive nitrogen speciation responds to the reduction in NOx emissions in this region remains to be elucidated. Here we exploit aircraft measurements from ICARTT (July–August 2004), SENEX (June–July 2013), and SEAC4RS (August–September 2013) and long-term ground measurement networks alongside a global chemistry–climate model to examine decadal changes in summertime reactive oxidized nitrogen (RON) and ozone over the Southeast US. We show that our model can reproduce the mean vertical profiles of major RON species and the total (NOy) in both 2004 and 2013. Among the major RON species, nitric acid (HNO3) is dominant (∼ 42–45 %), followed by NOx (31 %), total peroxy nitrates (ΣPNs; 14 %), and total alkyl nitrates (ΣANs; 9–12 %) on a regional scale. We find that most RON species, including NOx, ΣPNs, and HNO3, decline proportionally with decreasing NOx emissions in this region, leading to a similar decline in NOy. This linear response might be in part due to the nearly constant summertime supply of biogenic VOC emissions in this region. Our model captures the observed relative change in RON and surface ozone from 2004 to 2013. Model sensitivity tests indicate that further reductions of NOx emissions will lead to a continued decline in surface ozone and less frequent high-ozone events.


2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 584-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Anderson ◽  
Raymond W. Arritt ◽  
Zaitao Pan ◽  
Eugene S. Takle ◽  
William J. Gutowski ◽  
...  

2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor J. Burke ◽  
Simon J. Brown

Abstract The uncertainty in the projection of future drought occurrence was explored for four different drought indices using two model ensembles. The first ensemble expresses uncertainty in the parameter space of the third Hadley Centre climate model, and the second is a multimodel ensemble that additionally expresses structural uncertainty in the climate modeling process. The standardized precipitation index (SPI), the precipitation and potential evaporation anomaly (PPEA), the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI), and the soil moisture anomaly (SMA) were derived for both a single CO2 (1×CO2) and a double CO2 (2×CO2) climate. The change in moderate drought, defined by the 20th percentile of the relevant 1×CO2 distribution, was calculated. SPI, based solely on precipitation, shows little change in the proportion of the land surface in drought. All the other indices, which include a measure of the atmospheric demand for moisture, show a significant increase with an additional 5%–45% of the land surface in drought. There are large uncertainties in regional changes in drought. Regions where the precipitation decreases show a reproducible increase in drought across ensemble members and indices. In other regions the sign and magnitude of the change in drought is dependent on index definition and ensemble member, suggesting that the selection of appropriate drought indices is important for impact studies.


2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 13231-13249 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Joetzjer ◽  
H. Douville ◽  
C. Delire ◽  
P. Ciais ◽  
B. Decharme ◽  
...  

Abstract. The present study compares three meteorological drought indices (scPDSI, SPI and SPEI respectively) and their ability to account for the variations of annual mean river discharge on both interannual and climate change timescales. The Standardized Runoff Index (SRI) is used as a proxy of river discharge. The Mississippi and Amazon river basins provide two contrasted testbeds for this analysis. All meteorological drought indices are derived from monthly 2-meter temperature and/or precipitation, using either gridded observations or outputs of a global climate model. The SPI based solely on precipitation is not outperformed by the SPEI (accounting for potential evapotranspiration) and the scPDSI (based on a simplified water balance) at detecting interannual SRI variations. Under increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, the simulated response of the areal fraction in drought is highly index-dependent, suggesting that more physical water balance models are needed to account for the impact of global warming on hydrological droughts.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document