Droughts and Their Impact
Droughts and Their Impact
Droughts and Their Impact
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Dionysia G. Panagoulia
National Technical University of Athens
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1. INTRODUCTION
Man has always faced weather and climate vagaries and problems related to droughts.
However, the recent problems of inadequate water quality, which effectively reduced
the available resources, increased the severity of water deficits. Drought-related
disasters have been more devastating than other natural hazards (earthquakes,
volcanoes, etc), as far as deaths, suffering and economical damages are concerned.
Apart from destructive direct effects, drought events have been followed by secondary,
indirect calamities, such as famine, epidemics, fire, etc. Despite the progress in science
and technology, man is still vulnerable to extreme drought events. The losses increase
due to the continuing development of costly infrastracture, rise in population density,
and decrease of the buffering capacities (deforestation, urbanization, drainage wetlands,
etc). Understanding droughts, their occurrences, mechanisms, characteristics and
regularities is of great importance for the design and management of water resources
systems.
The study of drought problems includes the following topics:
identification of meteorological causes and drought forecast
evaluation of hydrologic drought characteristics at a site and over a region
analysis of economic, environmental and social effects of drought
definition of appropriate policy and management strategies for mitigating and
controlling drought effects.
Although an analytical literature review of droughts is not attempted, an outline of the
most important philosophies in drought definition and effects is given below:
(a) Drought definition stage. In this stage, several disciplines recognize the
importance of the analysis of such a natural hazard and try to identify the
essential features of a definition of drought phenomenon. Among-possible
references, pioneering works from a hydrological point of view include Eredia
(1922), Blumenstock (1942) and Yevjevich (1967); from an agricultural point of
view Van Bavel (1953) and Palmer (1965); from a socio-economic point of view
Tannehill (1947) and Russel et al. (1970).
(b) Drought description stage. This stage includes methods for analyzing historical
droughts aiming at:
evaluating the risk of future droughts
determining the consequences on economy, environment, and society
adopting an appropriate policy for mitigating drought effects
Regarding this stage, there are many references which could be mentioned, for
instance Glantz (1966), Rosenberg (1980), Doornkamp and Gregory (1980),
French (1983), Grigg and Vlachos (1989), Dracup and Kendall (1991), etc.
(c) Integrated system approach stage. In this stage, the single variable and single
discipline approaches are recognized to be insufficient for providing a good
understanding of drought problems. Many attempts have been made for a more
comprehensive analysis in order to characterize adequately the drought pheno-
menon and also for developing a more effective action against its consequences.
As a reference for this stage, several books can be considered (Campbell, 1968;
Warrick, 1975; Yevjevich et al., 1978), as well as the proceedings of several
international symposia (Yevjevich et al., 1983, Urbistondo and Bays, 1987;
Wilhite et al., 1987; Siccardi and Bras, 1989; Tardieu and Plus, 1989).
The aim of this report is to provide a description of the background of the definition
and the available methods characterizing point and regional droughts. Emphasis is given
to the spatial variability over a region, and the effects of drought over the water
consumption and use sectors, such as domestic, agricultural, industrial, etc activities.
Existing data and studies are presented. Finally, some implications for policy and action
programs are provided.
2. DEFINITIONS OF DROUGHTS
Many drought definitions are adopted in different fields (meteorology, hydrology,
economy of water resources), with reference to various hydrometeorologic variables.
Meteorological drought
Meteorological definitions of drought are the most prevalent. They often define drought
solely on the basis of the degree of dryness and the duration of the dry period. Thus,
meteorological drought has been defined as a period of more than a particular number
of days with precipitation less than some specified small amount (Wilhite and Glantz,
1985).
Hydrologic Drought
Definitions of hydrologic drought are concerned with the effects of dry spells on surface
or subsurface hydrology, rather than with the meteorological explanation of the event.
The frequency and severity of hydrologic drought is often defined on the basis of its
influence on river basins. Hydrologic droughts are often out of phase with both
meteorological and agricultural drought.
Agricultural Drought
Agricultural drought occurs when soil moisture is depleted to the extent that crop and
pasture yields are significantly affected. Agricultural drought definitions link various
characteristics of meteorological drought to agricultural impacts, focusing, for example,
on precipitation shortages, departures from normal, or numerous meteorological factors
such as evapotranspiration (Wilhite and Glantz, 1985).
Socio-economic Drought
Definitions which express features of the socioeconomic effects of drought can also
incorporate features of meteorological, agricultural, and hydrological drought (Wilhite
and Glantz, 1985). They are usually associated with the supply and demand of some
economic good. YevJevich (1967) has suggested that the time and space processes of
supply and demand are the two basic processes that should be considered for an
objective definition of drought.
3. MANAGEMENT USE OF DROUGHT INDICES
To water managers, drought means problems in meeting demand. In that sense, drought
means not having sufficient water to meet demands because supplies fall below
expected levels. The “expected levels” are socioeconomic, because expectations can be
adjusted. Because of this link with socioeconomics, a drought index that will be useful
to management must incorporate aspects of demand—that is, how adequate are supplies
to meet demand? To design an index for a particular situation, the following approach
might be used:
available water supplies
Index (1)
expected or mean water supplies
Available water supplies might include surface water, stored water, groundwater,
and soil moisture. The definition given earlier from the City of Portland (Grigg, 1996)
leads to the “Portland water supply index”. This index provides guidelines for the city
to assess the adequacy of its water supplies.
150
days per year
120
90
60
30
0
HYPO(1,-20)
HYPO(1,-10)
HYPO(2,-20)
HYPO(2,-10)
HYPO(4,-20)
HYPO(4,-10)
HYPO(1,10)
HYPO(1,20)
HYPO(2,10)
HYPO(2,20)
HYPO(4,10)
HYPO(4,20)
HYPO(1,0)
HYPO(2,0)
HYPO(4,0)
GISS(t,0)
Base case
GISS(t,p)
Figure 6 Mean number of low-flow days per year of Acheloos river at Mesochora
catchment outfall for the HYPO, GISS and base case climate scenarios.
3
Water reserves in Mm
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200 85
89
0 90
5/2 6/6 7/2 8/2 9/3 10/17 10/31 11/21 12/7 12/31
12. CONCLUSIONS
The lack of a precise and objective definition of drought in a specific situation has been
an obstacle to understanding drought, which has led to indecision and/or inaction on the
part of managers, policy makers, and others. There should not be a universal definition
of drought. Available definitions demonstrate a multidisciplinary interest in drought. It
is useful to subdivide definitions into four types on the basis of disciplinary perspective
(meteorologic, hydrologic, agricultural, and socioeconomic). Most scientific research
related to drought has emphasized the physical over the societal impacts of drought.
Drought severity is sometimes expressed by its societal impacts, although the precise
nature of those impacts is difficult to quantify. Secondary and tertiary effects often
extend beyond the spatially defined borders of drought. Human or social factors often
aggravate the effects of drought.
The vulnerability of large cropland areas, as well as the steady development of
large-scale complex water systems, emphasizes the importance of the regional drought
definition/ estimation in order to plan in advance, the necessary drought control
measures.
Despite the fact that many statistical methods and mathematical models allow the
extraction of available information on the underlying hydrologic process from the
station series within a region, a consolidated definition of regional drought is still
lacking.
The review of the several studies devoted to the regional drought analysis allows us
to distinguish: (i) a simple description of the areal coverage of historical regional
drought events; (ii) the probabilistic estimation of drought characteristics through the
direct use of historical samples; (iii) the analysis of the statistical properties of a few
indices, which describe the space-time variability of the drought phenomenon (in
particular, on the basis of rainfall or streamflow depths).
A number of challenging research and study areas could be distinguished therein as
the agenda for the scientific community during the next decade, related to three classes
of problems dealt with by three working groups:
* Legal Measures
* Economic Incentives/Pricing
Proactive * Zoning/Land-Use Policies
* Public Involvemen/Education
* Prioritizing Demands
Drought
Characteristics * Water-Saving Programs
Nature, Measures II Demand Reactive * Reduction of Nonessential Uses
Extent, Reduction * Recycling/Reuse
and Responses
* Metering
Duration,
Severity
*Agricultural Changes
Adjustments *Urban Adjustments
* Forecasting System
* Regulation of Consumption
Anticipatory * User Discretion
Strategies * Interstate Emergency Action
*Conflict Management
* Insurance
III Impact * Spread of Risk
Minimization Loss Absorption *Compensation Damages
* Disaster Relief
* Reserve Funds
* Modify Events
Loss Reduction *Damage Recovery
*Change Water Uses
Figure 8 Management strategies for drought. (from Grigg, 1996)
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