Investigation and monitoring of drought in Bushehr province using drought indicators and geographic information system (GIS)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Water Engineering, Faculty of Water and Soil, Zabol University, Zabol, Iran

2 Shahid Chamran Technical and Vocational College, Ahvaz, Iran

Abstract
Drought is considered one of the biggest natural disasters, the frequency of which is very high, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. Monitoring devices are necessary tools for drought management. It is with these systems that it is possible to know the intensity and spatial development of drought, which is usually done with drought indicators. In the present study, RAI, SPI, PN and DI indices were used to quantitatively express drought and its zoning in six meteorological stations in Bushehr province. First, the meteorological data of precipitation during the statistical period of 28 years (1989-2016) were collected from selected stations. Then, each of the indicators was calculated and the severity of drought was analyzed for the statistical period. R2 coefficient of determination was used to select the most appropriate profile and finally, in order to investigate droughts, zoning maps were prepared using kriging method. The results showed that in most of the stations, the pairs of profiles have a high correlation with each other. Also, the zoning results indicated that drought zoning in all indicators does not follow a regular trend during the studied period. According to zoning, the most severe droughts related to the years (1989-1999) have been observed in Dilam, Brazjan, Chahkotah and Bushehr stations. In all stations, PN and SPI indexes show droughts better than other stations, and RAI index also shows very severe droughts better.

Keywords

Subjects