Vegetation productivity is an essential variable in ecosystem functioning. Vegetation dynamics of dryland ecosystems are most strongly determined by water availability and consequently by rainfall and there is a need to better understand how water limited ecosystems respond to altered rainfall amounts and variability. This response is partly determined by the vegetation functional response to r...

Detailed knowledge of rainfall regime is an important prerequisite for agricultural planning. Despite the importance of rain-fed agriculture to food security in the semi-arid regions of South Africa, studies to understand the spatial and temporal variability of rainfall are not widely documented. Twenty-three years (1983 to 2005) of rainfall data were analysed in order to study the basic statis...

Seasonal rainfall in many regions is influenced by global climatic parameters such as El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), La Nina. Seasonal rainfall predictions are based on such Global climatic parameters. However, for operational purposes, such as reservoir operation or river basin management in a larger context, rainfall data at a finer time interval are required. In this paper, a temporal ...

This paper presents an Artificial Intelligence approach for regional rainfall forecasting for Orissa state, India on monthly and seasonal time scales. The possible relation between regional rainfall over Orissa and the large scale climate indices like El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), EQUitorial INdian Ocean Oscillation (EQUINOO) and a local climate index of Ocean-Land Temperature Contrast (...

This study aims to reveal rainfall anomalies and changes over the Yellow River Basin due to the fragile ecosystem and rainfall-related disasters. Common trend analyses relate to overall trends in mean values. Therefore, we used two graphical methods: the quantile perturbation method (QPM) was used to investigate anomalies over time in extreme rainfall, and the partial trend method (PTM) was use...

Recurrence of rain-induced landslides is controlled by the repetition of rain events. Therefore, rainfall induced landslide hazard analysis is more complicated than a conventional rainfall frequency analysis, and requires multi-stage procedures. It requires a susceptibility analysis to divide a region into successive classes at the first stage. Then, the relationship between the probability of ...

Watershed models such as SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) simulate water quality impacts of land and water resource management alternatives. To simulate these impacts, long-term daily rainfall data are necessary. In the absence of measured rainfall data, watershed models use weather generators to simulate rainfall events. The objective of this study is to examine several daily precipitatio...

Soil erosion is a global issue that threatens food security and causes environmental degradation. Management of water erosion requires accurate estimates of the spatial and temporal variations in the erosive power of rainfall (erosivity). Rainfall erosivity can be estimated from rain gauge stations and satellites. However, the time series rainfall data that has a high temporal resolution are of...

The impact of heavy rainfall events on waterborne diarrheal diseases is uncertain. We conducted weekly, active surveillance for diarrhea in 19 villages in Ecuador from February 2004 to April 2007 in order to evaluate whether biophysical and social factors modify vulnerability to heavy rainfall events. A heavy rainfall event was defined as 24-hour rainfall exceeding the 90th percentile value (56...

This study set out to investigate the trends of agriculturally-relevant rainfall characteristics among small-scale farmers in the rainfall-sensitive dry savanna agro-ecological zone of northern Ghana. Interviews are used to identify characteristics of rainfall which are deemed by the farmers as important in their food production. Time series daily rainfall data from 1960-2007 is then used to id...