Integrated Drought Watch System: A Case Study in Southern Italy

Abstract

Drought is a natural hazard with varying patterns in space, time, and intensity. Because of the spatial and temporal variability and multiple impacts of drought, it is necessary to improve tools and data available for mapping and monitoring this phenomenon on all scales. Starting from some initiatives promoted by the European Community, an integrated drought watch system aimed at analysing and forecasting the effects produced by prolonged water deficit periods has been developed in southern Italy. Using GIS technologies integrated with tele-metering network, hydrological databases and distributed water balance models, it allows the analysis of different aspects of the wider drought phenomenon. Specifically, meteorological, agricultural and hydrological aspects have been together considered in a common framework according to the features required by Web-GIS applications with the aim of using Internet as a diffusion tool of the spatially distributed information managed by the system. In this paper, after a brief description of the drought watch system functionalities, the capability of detecting severe and prolonged water deficit periods have been verified in two regions in southern Italy during the last decade, considering meteorological and satellite indices together with the principal water balance components. The analysis carried out on the study area pointed out an extremely intense drought phenomenon during the period 1996–2002, characterised by a reduction in precipitation together with higher evapotranspiration values and, as a consequence, by a broad decrease in surface and groundwater runoff.