Abstract

Accurate and reliable data processing is of primary importance for drought assessment. It helps decision makers to lay out mitigation measures within the context of drought preparedness planning and water resources management. In order to understand meteorological and hydrological drought, we need to identify drought characteristics (duration, severity and spatial extent). Drought indices are essential tools quantifying drought severity and identifying its frequency and duration. For the calculation of drought indices, availability of long time series of undisturbed, good-quality observational data is essential. The studied area cover a Bulgarian part of the catchment of Struma River which is one of the largest Bulgarian rivers. The general aim of this research is to evaluate the occurrence of hydrological and meteorological droughts in Struma River basin and to show utilization of various indices for comparative analysis of meteorological and hydrological drought. Drought events are identified using the following indices—Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and Streamflow Drought Index (SDI) for time scales 6 and 12 months. Additionally to these indices, we use also Rainfall Anomaly Index (RAI) and introduce Streamflow Anomaly Index (SAI). The main investigated period is 1962–2016.

Highlights

  • Drought is a major natural hazard with multiform impacts on the environment, the economy and society

  • The main purpose of this study is to determine the frequency of occurrence of meteorological and hydrological drought in different periods over many years (19622016), based on the Standardized precipitation index (SPI), Streamflow drought index (SDI) and Standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) and comparison of these indicators as criteria for assessing drought

  • The present paper aims to show the utilization of various indices for drought detection and analysis

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Summary

Introduction

Drought is a major natural hazard with multiform impacts on the environment, the economy and society. Disruption of the water balance of a given area due to a shortage of rainfall and strong evapotranspiration (meteorological drought) causes excessive drying of the soil (soil drought), lowering the groundwater level and reducing water flows in the rivers (hydrological drought). Among the different types of droughts, the hydrological component is the most important, given the high dependence of many activities (industrial, urban water supply and hydropower generation), on the surface water resources [2]. Hydrological droughts have a significant impact on water quality by disturbing the river's natural processes of self-purification. The region impacted by drought is limited to the river network and its vicinity, and to the whole basin [3]. It is important to investigate both - hydrological and meteorological droughts in the river basin

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