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Journal
of Environmental Hydrology ISSN 1058-3912 |
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Electronic
Journal of the International Association for Environmental Hydrology
JEH Volume 12 (2004), Paper 18 Posted September 30, 2004 A NEW INSIGHT INTO DROUGHT VULNERABILITY IN TURKEY USING THE STANDARD PRECIPITATION INDEX Ali Ümran Kömüsçü1 ABSTRACT Drought has become a recurrent phenomenon in Turkey in the last few decades. Significant drought conditions were observed during the late 1980s and the trend continued in the late 1990s. The magnitude of drought related losses and impacts in the agricultural sector and water resources indicate continuing vulnerability of the country to drought. In this study, the frequency and severity of meteorological droughts in Turkey have been investigated in relation to vulnerability concept using the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI). Frequency of drought events at different severity categories and critical threshold rainfall data are computed at different time scales to identify drought climatology. The study found that drought occurrences portray a very diverse but consistent picture with varying time scales. At the regional scale, southeastern and eastern Anatolia are characterized with moderate droughts at shorter time scales, while the occurrence of severe droughts at shorter time scales are typical at non-coastal parts of the country. A similar picture was observed with very severe drought variability. That led us to conclude that while the central parts of the country are more vulnerable to agricultural drought with faster depletion of the soil moisture, the coastal parts and eastern regions will suffer from hydrological drought, with consequent loss of water resources. In this study, critical threshold rainfall values were also computed to identify areas which must receive at least some amount of rainfall to avoid from drought conditions. The critical threshold values exhibited rising numbers during the growing season at the 3-month scale in the southeastern Anatolia, which is a significant result considering the presence of large irrigation projects in the area. In general, rainfall amounts required for non-drought conditions decrease from the coast toward the interior with increasing time scales. Reference: Komuscu, A.U., A. Erkan, E. Turgu and F.K. Sonmez; A New Insight into Drought Vulnerability in Turkey Using the Standard Precipitation Index, Journal of Environmental Hydrology, Vol. 12, Paper 18, September 2004 CONTACT: Dr. Ali Umran Komuscu Turkish State Metereological Service Research Department Kalaba 06120 Ankara Turkey E-mail:aukomuscu@meteor.gov.tr |
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