Investigating the influence of natural events and anthropogenic activities on hydrological drought in South Korea

Muhammad Jehanzaib,Sabab Ali Shah,Tae-Woong Kim,Hyun-Han Kwon

doi:10.3319/tao.2019.08.13.01

Abstract

This study is supported by Korea Ministry of Environment (MOE) as “Water Management Research Program (18AWMP-B079625-05)”. The first author would be highly thankful to Higher Education Commission (HEC) and Government of Pakistan for the scholarship under the project “HRD Initiative-MS leading to Ph.D. program of faculty development for UESTPS, Phase-1, and Batch-V for Hanyang University, South Korea”.

Highlights

Natural events and human activities are the two main driving forces that alter hydrological cycles
We investigated the impacts of climate variation and human activity on hydrological drought characteristics under different scenarios
Precipitation has overwhelming effects on streamflow, while temperature has very little effect (Karl and Riebsame 1989; McCabe and Wolock 2011). This is why the line of scenario DT has minute fluctuations. These results support the results of Bai et al (2015), which found that the potential evapotranspiration (PET) inputs have limited influence on monthly runoff estimates because temperature is the main driver of the PET and has minimal effect on streamflow

Summary

Introduction

Natural events and human activities are the two main driving forces that alter hydrological cycles Their impacts result in extreme natural disasters such as flood and drought, which have had devastating influences on global economies, agriculture, and environments over the past few decades. Sheffield and Wood (2007) noted that, so far in the 21th century, there has been abrupt increase in severity and frequency of hydrological drought in most locations due to increase in temperature without any increase in precipitation Human impacts, such as modification of land use/land cover, industrialization, irrigation, and urbanization, can alter hydrological processes and exert effects on the environment with significant implications for water resources, which affect hydrological drought (Sheffield et al 2012)

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Conclusion