Abstract
This study analyzes drought characteristics in the Awash River Basin of Ethiopia based on meteorological and hydrological variables. Standardized precipitation index is used for temporal and spatial analyses of meteorological drought and the theory of runs is used to define hydrological drought by considering streamflow as the drought indicator. Drought severity maps are generated using Arc View/GIS by summarizing the percentage of occurrence of droughts in areas within the study basin. Extreme drought category on 12-month time scale indicated that extreme events occur most frequently in the Upper and Middle Awash Basin. However, while considering the overall categories of drought, the most frequent droughts occurred in the Middle and Lower Awash Basin during the period of analysis. Similarly, results based on hydrological drought analysis shows that the severest drought events occurred in the Middle Awash Basin during May 1988 to June 1988 and April 1998 to May 1998. Analysis of the relationship between meteorological and hydrological drought indices in the basin shows that occurrence of hydrological drought event at Melka Sedi stream gauging station lags meteorological drought event in the Upper Awash on average by 7 months with a variation of 3 to 13 months.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abate Z (1994) Water resources development in Ethiopia: an evaluation of present experience and future planning concepts. Ithaca Press, UK
Anctil F, Larouche W, Viau AA (2002) Exploration of the standardized precipitation index with regional analysis. Can J Soil Sci 82(1):115–125
Bhuiyan C (2004) Various drought indices for monitoring drought condition in Aravalli terrain of India. In: Proceedings of the XXth ISPRS Conference. Int. Soc. Photogramm. Remote Sens., Istanbul. http://www.isprs.org/istanbul2004/comm7/papers/243.pdf
Bonaccorso B, Cancelliere A, Rossi G (2003a) An analytical formulation of return period of drought severity. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 17:157–174
Bonaccorso B, Bordi I, Cancelliere A, Rossi G, Sutera A (2003b) Spatial variability of drought: an analysis of SPI in Sicily. Water Resour Manag 17:273–296
Desalegn Ch E, Babel MS, Das Gupta A, Seleshi BA, Merrey D (2006) Farmers’ perception about water management under drought conditions in the Awash River Basin, Ethiopia. Int J Water Resour Dev 22(4):589–602
Domonkos P (2003) Recent precipitation trends in Hungary in the context of larger scale climatic changes. Nat Hazards 29(2):255–271
Dracup JA, Lee KS, Paulson EG Jr (1980) On the definition of droughts. Water Resour Res 16(2):297–302
Durrans SR, Tomic S (1996) Regionalization of low-flow frequency estimates: an Alabama case study. Water Resour Bull 32(1):23–37
Ethiopian Valleys Development Studies Authority (EVDSA) (1979) Amibara irrigation project II: inception report for technical support services. Halcrow-ULG, UK
Guttman NB (1998) Comparing the Palmer drought index and the standardized precipitation index. J Am Water Resour Assoc 34(1):113–121
Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water (2007) Indiana water resource update page, Standard Precipitation Index (SPI). http://www.in.gov/dnr/water/water_availability/WaterResource/spi.html. Access 25 September 2007
Komuscu AU (1999) Using the SPI to analyze spatial and temporal pattern of drought in Turkey. Drought Netw News 11:7–13
Kroll CN, Vogel RM (2002) The probability distribution of low streamflow series in the United States. J Hydrol Eng 7(2):137–146
Lana X, Serra C, Burgueno A (2002) Patterns of monthly rainfall shortage and excess in terms of the standardized precipitation index for Catalonia (NE Spain). Int J Climate 21(13):1669–1691
Linsley RK, Kohler MA, Paulhus JLH (1988) Hydrology for engineers. International Edition. McGraw-Hill, Singapore
Lloyd-Hughes B, Saunders MA (2002) A drought climatology for Europe. Int J Climate 22(13):1571–1592
Mathieu R, Richard Y (2003) Intensity and spatial extension of drought in South Africa at different time scales. Water SA 29(4):489–500
Min SK, Kwon WT, Park EH, Choi Y (2003) Spatial and temporal comparisons of droughts over Korea with East Asia. Int J Climate 23(2):223–233
Nalbantis I, Tsakiris G (2009) Assessment of hydrological drought revisited. Water Resour Manag 23:881–897
Pandey RP, Mishra SK, Singh R, Ramasastri KS (2008) Streamflow draught severity analysis of Betwa river system (India). Water Resour Manag 22:1127–1141
Paulo AA, Pereira LS (2007) Prediction of SPI draught class transitions using Markov chains. Water Resour Manag 21:1813–1827
Paulo AA, Pereira LS, Matias PG (2001) Analyses of local and regional droughts in southern Portugal. In: Proceedings workshop on drought mitigation for the near east and the Mediterranean, ICARDA, Aleppo, Syria
Raziei T, Sagfahian B, Paulo AA, Pereira LS, Bordi I (2009) Spatial patterns and temporal variability of draught in Western Iran. Water Resour Manag 23:439–455
Seiler R, Hayes M, Bressan L (2002) Using the standardized precipitation index for flood risk monitoring. Int J Climate 22:1365–1376
Shaban A (2009) Indicators and aspects of hydrological draught in Lebanon. Water Resour Manag 23:1875–1891
Shiau JT (2006) Fitting draught duration and severity with two dimensional copulas. Water Resour Manag 20:795–815
Tasker GD (1987) A comparison of methods for estimating low flow characteristics of streams. Water Resour Bull 23(6):1077–1082
Tsakiris G, Vangelis H (2004) Towards a draught watch system based on spatial SPI. Water Resour Manag 18:1–12
Tsakiris G, Pangalou D, Vangelis H (2007) Regional draught assessment based on the Reconnaissance Draught Index (RDI). Water Resour Manag 21:821–833
Vermes L (1998) How to work out a drought mitigation strategy. ICID Guide, 309/1998, Bonn
Wagnew A (2004) Socio economic and environmental impact assessment of community based small-scale irrigation in the Upper Awash Basin: a case study of four community based irrigation schemes. MSc thesis, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
Wallace TB, Cox WE (2002) Locating information on surface water availability in Virginia (draft). http://www.rappriverbasin.state.va.us/studies. Accessed May 2005
Wilhite DA (1997) Improving drought management in the west: the role of mitigation and preparedness, National drought mitigation center. University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Wilhite DA, Glantz MH (1985) Understanding the drought phenomenon: the role of definitions. Water Int 10(3):111–120
Wu H, Hayes MJ, Weiss A, Hu Q (2001) An evaluation of the standardized precipitation index, the China-Z Index and the statistical Z-Score. Int J Climate 21(6):745–758
Yevjevich V (1967) An objective approach to definitions and investigations of continental hydrologic droughts. Hydrology paper 23. Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Edossa, D.C., Babel, M.S. & Das Gupta, A. Drought Analysis in the Awash River Basin, Ethiopia. Water Resour Manage 24, 1441–1460 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-009-9508-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-009-9508-0