A modified method for drought identification

Abstract

Water management under drought conditions is a challenging task to irrigation and agricultural engineers. The parameters of interest in identifying drought include onset, termination and severity. In this paper, a methodology to identify those parameters from the available historic data on streamflow and rainfall having seasonal pattern is proposed. The methodology follows and modifies a procedure by Herbst et al. (1966) suggested for the analysis of drought. This modified methodology is applied to the streamflow series of the Bhadra river and the mean areal rainfall series for the catchment of the Bhadra reservoir in Karnataka State, India. The droughts identified by the proposed methodology are concurrent with the historically realized droughts, thus proving the viability and applicability of the methodology in the identification of drought conditions.