Handbook of Drought and Water Scarcity

Principles of Drought and Water Scarcity

Saeid Eslamian, Faezeh A. Eslamian

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781498731027
• eBook ISBN: 9781315404202
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

This volume include over 30 chapters, written by experts from around the world. It examines drought and all of the fundamental principles relating to drought and water scarcity. It includes coverage of the causes of drought, occurences, preparations, drought vulnerability assessments, societal implications, and more.

1
Definition of Drought

Neil A. Coles

University of Leeds and University of Western Australia

Saeid Eslamian

Isfahan University of Technology

1.1Introduction

1.2Defining Drought

1.3Drought and Rainfall Classification

1.4Drought by Design

1.5Summary and Conclusions

Authors

References

AbstractThe word drought in its definitive sense is derived from the archaic English and Scottish form of the word “drouth” that is an archaic or dialectal word for thirst. In more recent times, it has been used as a collective term to refer to an acute water shortage rather than thirst specifically.

However, the term “drought” can be applied to the lack or scarcity of anything or a prolonged absence of something specified, but historically it has been used to signify a prolonged period of dryness or low rainfall.

This chapter only discusses the use of the term drought as it relates to water shortages and how it is applied in various instances from forecasting to design.

1.1Introduction

Drought is a natural hazard and is one of the least understood and manageable phenomena impacting the world today [30]. Vulnerability to drought is increasing as the global climate varies, human population expands, water resources come under increasing pressure for alternate uses, and people use water in so many different ways and apply alternate demands relative to human consumption (including drinking water and sanitation), industrial uses, agricultural production systems, and environmental requirements such that there is no universal definition of drought [2,11,30].

1.2Defining Drought

Droughts are a normal part of climate variability and are generally recognized around the world as a lack of rainfall; however, this is not the only description that can be applied in defining what a drought is and the effect it has either locally or regionally. The following definitions of drought were first introduced in Britain in 1887:

• Absolute droughts—Periods of more than 14 consecutive days absolutely without rain
• Partial droughts—Periods of more than 28 consecutive days, the aggregate rainfall of which does not exceed 0.01 in. per diem
• Engineers’ droughts—Periods of three or more consecutive months, the aggregate rainfall of which does not exceed half the average [21]

The term “dry spell” in reference to drought was also first used in British rainfall records in 1919 [1].

The following dictionary or conceptual definitions have been used to define a “drought”:

Continuous dry weather [24]

Extreme dryness due to lack of rain [26]

A prolonged period of scanty rainfall [25]

Therefore, in the most general sense, a drought is defined as a deficiency of precipitation over an extended period of time—(for agricultural production—usually a season or more), resulting in a water shortage for some activity, industry group, community, or environmental sector [15]. This period of time can be prolonged and may be an abnormally dry period when the water availability is insufficient to satisfy expected (or normal) demand and could also be described as an extended period—a season, a year, or several years—of deficient rainfall relative to the statistical multiyear mean for a region [11].

Droughts, as such, are not purely a physical phenomenon that is defined strictly in terms of climate variability. A drought, therefore, is not simply classified as low rainfall; if it was, most of the arid and semiarid regions of the world (e.g., inland Australia, southwestern [SW] United States, Sahel, and Gobi), for instance, would be in almost perpetual drought [2]. In essence, drought can thus be determined by the balance between water supply and demand. The effect of a drought is governed by the interplay between a natural event (less precipitation or water inputs than expected) and the demand placed on the water supply, with human activities normally exacerbating the impact of a drought [15].

Beyond the conceptual definition of drought, the extent and severity of drought can be monitored in several ways and is normally dependent on the impact a drought has on a specific activity or phenomenon. This is often referred to as the operational definition of a drought and is monitored for example in terms ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Editors
• Contributors
• 1 Definition of Drought
• 2 Desertification and Drought
• 3 Meteorological Drought Indices: Definitions
• 4 Hydrological Drought: Water Surface and Duration Curve Indices
• 5 Agricultural Drought Indices: Combining Crop, Climate, and Soil Factors
• 6 Agricultural Drought: Organizational Perspectives
• 7 Ocean Oscillation and Drought Indices: Principles
• 8 Ocean Oscillation and Drought Indices: Application
• 9 Cause and Occurrence of Drought
• 10 Drought Modeling Methods
• 11 Drought Modeling Examples
• 12 Observational Network and Drought Monitoring
• 13 Real-Time Drought Management
• 14 Monitoring, Assessment, and Forecasting of Drought Using Remote Sensing and the Geographical Information System
• 15 Regionalization of Drought Prediction
• 16 Drought Severity in a Changing Climate
• 17 Drought Early Warning and Information Systems
• 18 Drought Assessment and Risk Analysis
• 19 New Approaches for Effective Drought Risk Assessment
• 20 Drought and Acceptable Risks for Public Systems
• 21 Remote Sensing in Drought Quantification and Assessment
• 22 NASA Satellite–Based Global Precipitation Products and Services for Drought
• 23 Application of Data-Driven Models in Drought Forecasting
• 24 Application of Intelligent Technology in Rainfall Analysis
• 25 Application of the Optimization Models and Decision Support Systems in Drought
• 26 Copula Functions and Drought
• 27 Drought Frequency Characterization in Spain by Means of T Analysis
• 28 Rainfall Prediction Using Time Series Analysis
• 29 Meteorological Drought Indices: Rainfall Prediction in Argentina
• 30 Modeling Hydrological Process by ARIMA–GARCH Time Series
• 31 Gradation of Drought-Prone Area
• 32 Social Aspects of Water Scarcity and Drought
• 33 Drought Losses to Local Economy
• 34 Analysis of Drought Factors Affecting the Economy
• Index