Abstract
Meteorological drought indicators are commonly used for agricultural drought contingency planning in Ethiopia. Agricultural droughts arise due to soil moisture deficits. While these deficits may be caused by meteorological droughts, the timing and duration of agricultural droughts need not coincide with the onset of meteorological droughts due to soil moisture buffering. Similarly, agricultural droughts can persist, even after the cessation of meteorological droughts, due to delayed hydrologic processes. Understanding the relationship between meteorological and agricultural droughts is therefore crucial. An evaluation framework was developed to compare meteorological- and agriculture-related drought indicators using a suite of exploratory and confirmatory tools. Receiver operator characteristics (ROC) was used to understand the covariation of meteorological and agricultural droughts. Comparisons were carried out between SPI-2, SPEI-2, and Palmer Z-index to assess intraseasonal droughts, and between SPI-6, SPEI-6, and PDSI for full-season evaluations. SPI was seen to correlate well with selected agriculture-related drought indicators, but did not explain all the variability noted in them. The correlation between meteorological and agricultural droughts exhibited spatial variability which varied across indicators. SPI is better suited to predict non-agricultural drought states than agricultural drought states. Differences between agricultural and meteorological droughts must be accounted for in order to devise better drought-preparedness planning.
Highlights
Ethiopia is a predominantly rural country with a high level of dependence on rainfed agriculture and pastoral activities
This result highlights that standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI)-2 is controlled by different mechanisms in differentThis parts of Ethiopia
Result highlights that the SPEI-2 is controlled by different mechanisms in different parts of has a higher role in controlling intraseason droughts
Summary
Ethiopia is a predominantly rural country with a high level of dependence on rainfed agriculture and pastoral activities. The vulnerability of the agriculture sector (broadly defined here to include pastoral activities as well) to drought risk is high due to lack of irrigation infrastructure. The government of Ethiopia has recognized that drought management is essential to the sustainable development of the nation. In 2013, the government adopted a national policy and strategy for disaster risk management (DRM) which calls for decentralized, stakeholder-based approaches to deal with recurring disasters such as droughts. Woredas (districts or third level administrative units) are required to develop drought contingency plans (DCP) to increase local resilience to recurring droughts, and mitigate the harmful social effects associated with drought events [4]
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