Multi-criteria modelling of drought: a study of Brandenburg Federal State, Germany

Abstract

Drought is the absence or below-required supply of precipitation, runoff and or moisture for an extended time period. Modelling drought is relevant in assessing drought incidence and pattern. This study aimed to model the spatial variation and incidence of the 2018 drought in Brandenburg using GIS and remote sensing. To achieve this, we employed a Multi-Criteria Approach (MCA) by using three parameters including Precipitation, Land Surface Temperature and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). We acquired the precipitation data from Deutsche Wetterdienst, Land Surface Temperature and NDVI from Landsat 8 imageries on the USGS Earth Explorer. The datasets were analyzed using ArcGIS 10.7. The information from these three datasets was used as parameters in assessing drought prevalence using the MCA. The MCA was used in developing the drought model, ‘PLAN’, which was used to classify the study area into three levels/zones of drought prevalence: moderate, high and extreme drought. We went further to quantify the agricultural areas affected by drought in the study area by integrating the land use map. Results revealed that 92% of the study area was severely and highly affected by drought especially in districts of Oberhavel, Uckermark, Potsdam-Staedte, and Teltow-Flaeming. Finding also revealed that 77.54% of the total agricultural land falls within the high drought zones. We advocated for the application of drought models (such as ‘PLAN’), that incorporates flexibility (tailoring to study needs) and multi-criteria (robustness) in drought assessment. We also suggested that adaptive drought management should be championed using drought prevalence mapping.

Geospatial Analysis of Soil Erosion Susceptibility and Causative Factors in Anambra State, South East, Nigeria

“…NDVI is positively related to Land use Land cover [54]. The NDVI of the study area varied from 0.397705 to -0.109748 with an average of 0.1439785 and coefficient of variation of 22.02.…”

Impact of drought hazards on flow regimes in anthropogenically impacted streams: an isotopic perspective on climate stress

“…Nevertheless, increasing ET and projected precipitation decreases may compromise the catchments' ability to maintain green and blue water fluxes throughout the year in areas with lower water retention. Especially in agricultural catchments, the dominance of green water fluxes from water intensive crops such as maize and other cereals, can propagate inter-year drought memory effects from reduced blue water fluxes to groundwater recharge and streamflow generation (Ihinegbu & Ogunwumi, 2022;Orth & Seneviratne, 2013), creating uncertainty over the resilience of agricultural production and landuse (Beillouin et al, 2020;McNamara et al, 2024) https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2024-44 Preprint. Discussion started: 14 May 2024 c Author(s) 2024.…”

Climatic and Other Global Changes as Current Challenges in Improving Water Systems Management: Lessons from the Case of Italy

“…Multi-criteria approaches have been proposed for selecting the best combination of measures, since the early 1980s (Duckstein 1983 ) and discussed or applied in several cases (see Munda et al 1998 , Rossi et al 2005 ; Yilmaz and Harmancioglu 2010 ; Abdullah et al 2021 ; Ihinegbu and Ogunwumi 2022 ).…”