Inclusion of groundwater and socio-economic factors for assessing comprehensive drought vulnerability over Narmada River Basin, India: A geospatial approach

Abstract

Drought is amongst the most precarious natural hazards associated with severe repercussions. The characterization of droughts is usually carried out by the sector-specific (meteorological/agricultural/hydrological) indices that are mostly based on hydroclimatic variables. Groundwater is the major source of water supply during drought periods, and the socio-economic factors control the aftermaths of droughts; however, they are often ignored by the sector-specific indices, thereby failing to capture the overall impacts of droughts. This study aims to circumvent this issue by incorporating hydroclimatic, socio-economic and physiographic information to assess the overall drought vulnerability over Narmada River Basin, India, which is an agriculture-dominated basin highly dependent on groundwater resources. A Comprehensive Drought Vulnerability Indicator (CDVI) is proposed that assimilates the information on meteorological fluctuations, depth to groundwater level, slope, distance from river reach, population density, land use/land cover, soil type, and elevation through a geospatial approach. The CDVI showed a remarkable geospatial variation over the basin, with a majority (66.4%) of the area under highly to extremely vulnerable conditions. Out of 35 constituent districts of the basin, 9, 22, and 4 districts exhibited moderate, high, and extreme vulnerability to droughts, respectively. These results urge an immediate attention towards reducing drought vulnerability and enhancing resilience towards drought occurrences. The proposed multi-dimensional approach for drought vulnerability mapping would certainly help policy-makers to proactively plan and manage water resources over the basin, especially to ameliorate the pernicious impacts of droughts.

Drought vulnerability modeling over Mandawa watershed, northern Iraq, using GIS-AHP techniques

“…Because of the property of water retention abilities, soil type is regarded a contributing component in drought vulnerability assessments (Swain et al, 2022). Water retention capacity varies according to soil type, particularly the texture of the constituent elements.…”

“…Water retention capacity varies according to soil type, particularly the texture of the constituent elements. Finer-grained soils can hold more water than coarser-grained soils (Swain et al, 2022). The soil texture map for the study area was created by extracting a study area soil map from The FAO Digital Soil Map of the World with scale (1:5000000).…”

Morpho-physiological and biochemical response of rice (Oryza sativa L.) to drought stress: A review

“…Furthermore, drought during flowering time negatively impacts the overall amount of filled grain panicles [ 3 ]. Drought is typically defined using three criteria: meteorological, hydrological, and agricultural drought [ 4 ]. It has also been identified as the main obstacle to the development of rainfed rice, influencing the crop’s morpho-physio characteristics [ 5 ].…”

Groundwater quality assessment using geospatial and statistical approaches over Faridabad and Gurgaon districts of National Capital Region, India

“…Groundwater plays a vital role in fulfilling the water demands for India's municipal, agricultural, and industrial sectors. It is also a fact that India is the largest user of groundwater in the world, with an annual usage of 251 km 3 (Sahoo et al 2021;Swain et al 2022). As groundwater is generally believed to be free from contaminants as their exposure is relatively lesser than surface water bodies, they are directly used for drinking purposes at several places, especially in developing countries (Dhal and Swain 2022).…”