Droughts produce a complex set of negative economic, environmental, and social impacts across a country or region. Using monthly standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) values, drought characteristics, namely, drought duration, severity, interval time and minimum SPI values, were determined. Two exponential distributions were used to model drought duration and interval time, respectively; gamma ...

The goal of the WMO Expert Meeting on Agricultural Drought Indices was to move forward in the selection of a single drought index that would be used worldwide in the assessment of agricultural drought and its severity. This chapter discusses the challenges in identifying a single index to accomplish this task. Given the complexities of drought and its diverse sectoral impacts, this is a formida...

Assessment and understanding of past climate is an important step for drought mitigation and water resources planning. In this study, streamflow simulation obtained from the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model was used for drought characterization, and subsequently regionalization was done based on the annual severity level, for the Brazos basin in Texas over a time span of 1949-2000. It...

A practical approach was developed in the study for drought monitoring in Guangdong province of China on the basis of vegetation supply water index (VSWI) and precipitation distance index (PDI). A comprehensive index for assessment of agro-drought severity (SADI) was then established from the normalized VSWI and PDI. Using MODIS satellite images and precipitation data from ground-observed meteo...

Droughts can influence forest composition directly by limiting water or indirectly by intensifying other stressors that affect establishment, growth, and mortality. Using community assemblages of eastern US tree species and drought tolerance characteristics assessed from literature, we examine recent drought conditions in relation to the spatial distribution of species and their tolerance to dr...

abstract this research evaluates climate change effects on drought severity in the region of gharesou, iran. the standardized precipitation index (spi) has been used for estimation of drought severity. a geographical information system is applied for calculating the mean areal precipitation time series from 11 meteorological stations, in and out of the area for the hydrological period jan 1971-...

A new drought index is introduced that explicitly considers both water supply and demand. It can be applied to aggregate demand over a geographical region, or for disaggregated demand related to a specific crop or use. Consequently, it is more directly related than existing indices, to potential drought impacts on different segments of society, and is also suitable to use as an index for drough...

The temporal and spatial characteristics of droughts are investigated to provide a framework for sustainable water resources management in a semi-arid region. Using the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) as an indicator of drought severity, the characteristics of droughts are examined in the Conchos River Basin in Mexico. This basin is important to both the United States and Mexico, because t...