scholarly journals Identification of spatiotemporal patterns of biophysical droughts in semi-arid region – a case study of the Karkheh river basin in Iran

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 5187-5217 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Kamali ◽  
K. C. Abbaspour ◽  
A. Lehmann ◽  
B. Wehrli ◽  
H. Yang

Abstract. This study aims at identifying historical patterns of meteorological, hydrological, and agricultural (inclusively biophysical) droughts in the Karkheh River Basin (KRB), one of the nine benchmark watersheds of the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food. Standardized precipitation index (SPI), standardized runoff index (SRI), and soil moisture deficit index (SMDI) were used to represent the above three types of droughts, respectively. The three drought indices were compared across temporal and spatial dimensions. Variables required for calculating the indices were obtained from the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) constructed for the region. The model was calibrated based on monthly runoff and yearly wheat yield using the Sequential Uncertainty Fitting (SUFI-2) algorithm. Five meteorological drought events were identified in the studied period (1980–2004), of which four corresponded with the hydrological droughts with 1–3 month lag. The meteorological droughts corresponded well with the agricultural droughts during dry months (May–August), while the latter lasted for a longer period of time. Analysis of drought patterns showed that southern parts of the catchment were more prone to agricultural drought, while less influenced by hydrological drought. Our analyses highlighted the necessity for monitoring all three aspects of drought for a more effective watershed management. The analysis on different types of droughts in this study provides a framework for assessing their possible impacts under future climate change in semi-arid areas.

Hydrology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doan Quang Tri ◽  
Tran Tho Dat ◽  
Dinh Duc Truong

The objective of this study was to establish drought classification maps to simulate and calculate the lack of discharge in the Ba River basin in Vietnam. The maps were established using three meteorological drought indices (the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), the Drought Index (J), and the Ped Index (Ped)), the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model, and the hydrological drought index (KDrought). The results from the calculation of the SPI, Aridity Index (AI), and Ped at three stations (An Khe, Ayunpa, and MDrak) showed that the J index was suitable for the study area. Based on the J index, an extreme drought was predicted to occur at the Ayunpa, An Khe, and MDrak stations. During the calibration process, the SWAT Calibration Uncertainties Program (SWAT-CUP) model, with automatic algorithms, was used to select the parameters to optimize the SWAT model. For the calibration and validation, the observed discharge at two hydrology stations, An Khe and Cung Son, from the periods 1981–1991 and 1992–2002, respectively, were used. The simulated discharge was found to be acceptable, with the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), Percent bias (PBIAS), and R2 reaching good levels in both calibration and validation. The results from the calculation of the drought index (KDrought), and the established drought classification maps in 2016, showed that the most affected areas were the communes of the Gia Lai and Dak Lak provinces. The results from the simulation and calculations were found to be consistent with the situation that occurred in practice. The application of meteorological and hydrological drought indices, as well as the hydrological model, to support impact assessments of drought classification in space and time, as well as the establishment of forecasting and warning maps, will help managers to effectively plan policy responses to drought.


Water Policy ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (S2) ◽  
pp. 177-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ismail Kaan Tuncok

The focus of this study was to integrate drought planning and management into local and regional decision-making processes in the Seyhan River Basin, which is the second-largest basin after the Nile in the Eastern Mediterranean and agriculturally one of the most productive regions in Turkey and Europe. The methodological approach consisted of two steps: Step 1 – review and analyse historical data sets to evaluate and characterize water resources and drought-driven elements; Step 2 – evaluate drought indices to characterize drought conditions through use of the Standardized Precipitation Index and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index. Historical and future expected drought periods were identified in the context of hydrologic, meteorologic and agricultural drought conditions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javad Bazrafshan ◽  
Zahra Azhdari

Abstract In arid and semi-arid regions, precipitation and seasonal streamflow are the two major sources of water for vegetation. The scarcity of these water sources has a detrimental effect on vegetation cover degradation. The purpose of this research is to study the effect of meteorological and hydrological droughts, and also their combined effects, on vegetation changes in seven coastal sub-basins in southern Iran (part of the Bandar-Sedij and Kol-Mehran catchment). To track meteorological and hydrological droughts, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Streamflow Drought Index (SDI) were used. The copula function and the entropy approach (which is developed in this research) were used to blend individual meteorological and hydrological drought indices, yielding hybrid indices called the Copula-based Drought Index and the Entropy-based Drought Index (EnDI). The single (i.e., SPI and SDI) and hybrid drought indices (CoDI and EnDI) were compared in terms of temporal behavior, drought severity and duration characteristics, drought frequency, and a bivariate analysis of the drought severity-duration return period. The results indicated that the rank correlation (\({r}_{s}\)) between SPI and SDI ranged between 0.327 and 0.726 in the studied sub-basins. However, the two hybrid indices CoDI and EnDI had extremely high correlations (\({r}_{s}\ge 0.9\)). Despite the fact that meteorological droughts benefited both hybrid drought indices more than hydrological droughts, the contribution of meteorological droughts to EnDI was greater than that of CoDI. Over the study region, CoDI reported droughts that were both longer and more severe than those recorded by EnDI. EnDI showed stronger associations with the Normalized Vegetation Difference Index (NDVI) in nearly all the sub-basins, possibly because precipitation has a greater effect on EnDI than it does on CoDI. EnDI was therefore recommended as a superior index for estimating vegetation droughts throughout the research region.


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.


Author(s):  
Maedeh Enayati ◽  
Omid Bozorg-Haddad ◽  
Javad Bazrafshan ◽  
Somayeh Hejabi ◽  
Xuefeng Chu

Abstract This study aims to conduct a thorough investigation to compare the abilities of QM techniques as a bias correction method for the raw outputs from GCM/RCM combinations. The Karkheh River basin in Iran was selected as a case study, due to its diverse topographic features, to test the performances of the bias correction methods under different conditions. The outputs of two GCM/RCM combinations (ICHEC and NOAA-ESM) were acquired from the CORDEX dataset for this study. The results indicated that the performances of the QMs varied, depending on the transformation functions, parameter sets, and topographic conditions. In some cases, the QMs' adjustments even made the GCM/RCM combinations' raw outputs worse. The result of this study suggested that apart from DIST, PTF:scale, and SSPLIN, the rest of the considered QM methods can provide relatively improved results for both rainfall and temperature variables. It should be noted that, according to the results obtained from the diverse topographic conditions of the sub-basins, the empirical quantiles (QUANT) and robust empirical quantiles (RQUANT) methods proved to be excellent options to correct the bias of rainfall data, while all bias correction methods, with the notable exceptions of performed PTF:scale and SSPLIN, performed relatively well for the temperature variable.


Author(s):  
Esdras Adriano Barbosa dos Santos ◽  
Tatijana Stosic ◽  
Ikaro Daniel de Carvalho Barreto ◽  
Laélia Campos ◽  
Antonio Samuel Alves da Silva

This work evaluated dry and rainy conditions in the subregions of the São Francisco River Basin (BHSF) using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Markov chains. Each subregion of the BHSF has specific physical and climatic characteristics. The data was obtained from the National Water Agency (ANA), collected by four pluviometric stations (representative of each subregion), covering 46 years of data, from 1970 to 2015. The SPI was calculated for the time scales of six and twelve months and transition probabilities were obtained using the Markov chain. Transition matrices showed that, at both scales, if the climate conditions were severe drought or rainy, switching to another class would be unlikely in the short term.  Correlating this information with the probabilities of the stationary distribution, it was possible to find the regions that are most likely to be under rainy or dry weather in the future. The recurrence times calculated for the stations that belong to the semi-arid region were smaller when compared to the value of the return period of the representative station of Upper São Francisco that has higher levels of precipitation, confirming the predisposition of the semi-arid region to present greater chances of future periods of drought.


CATENA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 182 ◽  
pp. 104128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bahram Choubin ◽  
Karim Solaimani ◽  
Fereidoun Rezanezhad ◽  
Mahmoud Habibnejad Roshan ◽  
Arash Malekian ◽  
...  

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