A Review of Some Methods used for Drought Identification and Analysis

Authors

  • Agwata J.F University of Eldoret

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2200/aerj.v2i1.28

Keywords:

Drought, Drought events, Truncation level, Markov process

Abstract

Water management under extreme hydrologic conditions such as drought is a challenging
issue to hydrologists, engineers and environmental scientists. To ensure sustainable
management of water during drought periods and to adequately resolve various issues related to drought occurrence and management at various scales, it is important that suitable methods and procedures for drought identification and analysis be known. Examining the available techniques can do this. In this paper, some of the methods that can be used to identify and analyse drought are reviewed. Although several methods are available for drought identification and analysis, it is noted that not a single technique can be used for all drought types and in all circumstances and that for various drought types, it is necessary that they be identified and analysed using a combination of different techniques.

References

Agwata, J. F. (2005). The characteristics of hydrological drought in the upper parts of the Tana basin, Kenya. Unpublished PhD thesis, Kenyatta University, Kenya.

Alley, W. M. (1984). The Palmer Drought Severity Index: limitations and assumptions. Journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology, 23:1100-1109.

Bayazit, M. (1981). Distribution of joint run-lengths of bivariate Markov processes. Journal of Hydrology, 50, 35-43.

Bayazit, M. and Önöz, B. (2005). Probabilities and return periods of multisite droughts.

Hydrological Sciences Journal, 50(4), 605-615.

Ben-Zvi, A. (1987). Indices of hydrological drought in Israel. Journal of Hydrology, 92, 179-

Bonacci, O. (1993). Hydrological identification of drought. Hydrological processes, 7, 249-

Bonacci, O. and Stambuk, N. (1991). Climate changes at Split-Marjan. Voda Sanitarna

Tehnika, 21, 3: 15-24.

Chang, T. J. and Stenson, J. R. (1990). Is it realistic to define a 100-year drought for water

management? Water Resources Bulletin, 26, 823-829.

Chung, C. H. and Salas, J. D. (2000). Drought occurrence probabilities and risks of

dependent hydrologic processes. Journal of Hydrological Engineering ASCE 5(3),

-268.

Clausen, B. and Pearson, C. P. (1995). Regional frequency analysis of annual maximum

streamflow drought. Journal of Hydrology, 173, 111-130.

Cordery, I., and McCall, M. (2000). A model for forecasting droughts from teleconnections.

Water Resources Research 36(3), 763-768.

Dalezios, N. R., Loukas, A., Vasiliades, L. and Liakopoulos, E. (2000). Severity-durationfrequency analysis of droughts and wet periods in Greece. Hydrological Sciences

Journal 45(5), 751-770.

Dracup, J. A. and Kendall, D. R. (1988). Frequency analysis of potential hydrologic drought.

Selected Papers from the Workshop on Natural disasters in European Mediterranean

Countries, Perugia, Italy. Pp 351-370.

Dracup, J. A., Lee, K. S. and Paulson, E. G. (1980). On the statistical characterization of

drought events. Water Resources Research, 16, 2: 289-296.

Grigg, N. S. (1989). Hydrology and management of drought in the U.S. IAHS Publ. No. 181.

Pp. 303-313.

Gustard, A. and Irving, K. M. (1993). Classification of the low flow response of European

soils. In: A. Gustrad (Editor), Flow Regimes from International Experimental and

Network Data (FRIEND), Vol., 1, Hydrological Studies. Institute of Hydrology,

Wallingford, UK. Pp. 98-109.

Gustard, A., Bullock, A. and Dixson, J. M. (1992). Low flow estimation in the United

Kingdom. Report 108, Institute of Hydrology, Wallingford, UK. 88 pp.

Hayes, D. C. (1991). Low flow characteristics of streams in Virginia. USGS Water Supply

Paper 2374, 63 pp.

Herbst, P. H., Bredenkamp, D. B. and Barker, H. M. G. (1966). A technique for the

evaluation of drought from rainfall data. Journal of Hydrology, 4, 4: 264-272.

Horn, D. R. (1989). Characteristics and spatial variability of droughts in Idaho. J. Irrig.

Drain. Engng, 115, 111-123.

Kjeldsen, T. R., Lundorf, A. and Rosbjerg, D. (2000). Use of a two component exponential

distribution in partial duration modelling of hydrological droughts in Zimbabwean

rivers. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 45(2), 265-298.

Kumar, V. and Panu, U. S. (1994). On application of pattern recognition in drought

classification. In: Proceedings of Annual Conference of the Canadian Society of Civil

Engineers (Winnipeg, Manitoba), 71-76. Canadian Society of Civil Engineers,

Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Kumar. V. and Panu, U. S. (1997). Predictive assessment of severity of agricultural droughts

based on agro-climatic factors. Journal of American Water Resources Association

(6), 1255-1264.

Lee, K. S., Sadeghipour, J. and Dramp, J. A. (1986). An application for frequency analysis of

multi-year drought durations. Water Resources Research, 22(5), 655-662.

Lohani, V. K. and Lognathan, G. V. (1997). An early warning system for drought

management using the Palmer drought severity index. Nordic Hydrology, 29(1), 21-

Madsen, H. and Rosbjerg, D. (1995). On the modelling of extreme droughts. Modelling and

Management of Sustainable Basin-Scale Water Resource Systems, IAHS Publication

No. 231. Pp. 377-385.

McKee, T. B., Doesken, N. J. and Kleist, J. (1993). The relationship of drought frequency

and duration to time scales. Preprints, Eighth Conference on Applied Climatology,

Anaheim, California, USA, 179-184.

McKee, T. B., Doesken, N. J. and Kleist, J. (1995). Drought monitoring with multiple time

scales. Preprints, Ninth Conference on Applied Climatology, Dallas, Texas, USA,

-236.

Mohan, S. and Rangacharya, N. C. V. (1991). A modified method for drought identification.

Hydrological Sciences Journal, 36, 1: 11-21.

Oladipo, E. O. (1985). A comparative performance analysis of three meteorological drought

indices. Journal of Climatology, 5, 655-664.

Ozga-Zielinska, M. (1989). Droughts and floods. Their definition and modelling. IAHS

Publication No. 181, pp. 313-322.

Palmer, W. C. (1965). Meteorological drought. Research Paper 45, US Weather Bureau,

Washington.

Pandzic, K. and Subaric, Y. (1984). Precipitation amount as the most important drought

indicator, Papers RHMZ Zagreb, Pp. 303-306.

Panu, U. S. and Sharma, T. C. (2002). Challenges in Drought Research: some perspectives

and future directions. Hydrological Sciences Journal 47(S): S19-S30.

Pearson, C. P. (1995). Regional frequency analysis of low flows in New Zealand rivers.

Journal of Hydrology, NZ, 33(2).

Piechota, T. C. and Dracup, J. A. (1996). Drought and regional hydrologic variation in the

United States: association with the El Nino Southern Oscillation. Water Resources

Research 32(5), 1359-1373.

Pongracz, R., Bogard, I. and Duckstein, L. (2005). Climatic forcing of droughts: a Central

European example. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 48(1), 39-50.

Rossi, G., Benedini, M., Tsakiris, G. and Giakoumakis, S. (1992). On Regional Drought

Estimation and Analysis. Water Resources Management, 6: 249-277.

Sen, Z. (1976). Wet and dry periods of annual flow series. J. Hydraul. Div. ASCE 20, 503-

Sen, Z. (1977). Run sums of annual flow series. J. Hydrol. 35, 312-324.

Sen, Z. (1980). Statistical analysis of hydrologic critical droughts. J. Hydraul. Div. ASCE 46,

-263.

Sen, Z. (1990). Critical drought analysis by second order Markov chain. J. Hydrol, 20, 183-

Sharma, T. C. (1994). Stochastic features of drought in Kenya, East Africa. Stochastic and

Statistical Methods in Hydrology and Environmental Engineering, Volume 1, 125-

Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands.

Sharma, T. C. (2000). Drought parameters in relation to truncation levels. Hydrological

processes, 14, 1279-1288.

Shin, H. and Salas, J. D. (2000). Regional drought analysis based on neural networks.

Journal of Hydrological Engineering, ASCE 5(2), 145-155.

Sirdas, S. and Sen, Z. (2003). Spatio-temporal drought analysis in the Trakya region, Turkey.

Hydrological Sciences Journal, 48(5), 809-820.

Srikanthan, R. (1993). Estimation of drought indices for Melbourne water data. Research

Report, Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, Australia. 51 pp.

Stedinger, J. R., Vogel, R. M. and Foufoula-Georgiou, E. (1993). Frequency analysis of

extreme events. In: D. R. Maidment (Editor), Handbook of Hydrology. McGraw Hill,

New York. Chapter 18.

Stockton, C. W. (1988). Tree-ring data analysis for the study of droughts. Selected Papers

from the Workshop on Natural disasters in European Mediterranean Countries,

Perugia, Italy. Pp 311-332.

Tallaksen, L. M., Madsen, H. and Clausen, B. (1997). On the Definition and Modelling of

Drought Duration and Deficit Volume. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 42 (1), 15 -

Van Lanen, H. A. J., Tallaksen, L. M., Kasparek, L. and Querner, E. P. (1997). Hydrological

drought analysis in the Hupsel basin using different physically based models. IAHS

Publ. no 246. P 189-196.

Wendland, W. M. (1990). Hydrological aspect of the 1988 drought in Illinois. Water

Resources Bulletin, 26, 913-920.

Wilhite, D. A. and Glantz, M. H. (1985). Understanding the drought phenomenon: the role of

definitions. Water International: 111-120.

Willeke, G., Hosking, J. R. M., Wallis, J. R. and Guttman, N. B., (1994). The National

Drought Atlas. Institute for Water Resources Report 94-NDS-4, U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers.

Woo, M. K. and Tarhule, A. (1994). Streamflow droughts of northern Nigeria Rivers.

Hydrological Sciences Journal, 39, 1: 19-33. Yevjevich, V. (1967). An objective

approach to definition and investigations of continental hydrological droughts.

Hydrological paper no. 23, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.

Yevjevich, V. M., Hall, W. A. and Salas, J. D. (1977). Drought research needs. Colorado

State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.

Zelenhasic, E. and Salvai, A. (1987). A method of streamflow drought analysis. Water

Resources Research, 23, 1: 156-168

Downloads

Published

2022-07-04

How to Cite

J.F, A. . (2022). A Review of Some Methods used for Drought Identification and Analysis. Africa Environmental Review Journal, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.2200/aerj.v2i1.28