Multi-method assessment of reservoir effects on hydrological droughts in 
an arid region

Rangecroft, Sally; Loon, Anne F. Van; Maureira, Héctor; Verbist, Koen; Hannah, David M.

doi:10.5194/esd-2016-57

Cited by 31 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(76 reference statements)

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“…Three drought categories were used for hydrological drought assessment, based on the categories established for the SPI to define meteorological drought conditions [36]. Table 2 shows the SSI categories, which are in line with recent research based on the SSI [31,32,37,38] and will help to compare the results obtained considering meteorological drought assessment based on the SPI over SSA (e.g., [39]). …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 55%

Spatio-Temporal Patterns of the 2010–2015 Extreme Hydrological Drought across the Central Andes, Argentina

Rivera

Penalba

Villalba

et al. 2017

Water

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During the period 2010-2015, the semi-arid Central Andes in Argentina (CAA) experienced one of the most severe and long-lasting hydrological droughts on record. Since the snowmelt is the most important source of water, the reduced snowfall over the mountains propagated the drought signal through the streamflows in the adjacent foothills east of the Andes ranges. Motivated by the widespread impacts on the socio-economic activities in the region, this study aims to characterize the recent hydrological drought in terms of streamflow deficits. Based on streamflow data from 20 basins, we used the standardized streamflow index (SSI) to characterize hydrological droughts during the period 1971-2016. We found that the regional extent of the 2010-2015 hydrological drought was limited to the basins located north of 38 • S, with mean duration of 67 months and maximum drought severity exhibiting a heterogeneous pattern in terms of spatial distribution and time of occurrence. The drought event reached extreme conditions in 14 of the 15 basins in the CAA, being record-breaking drought in six of the basins. This condition was likely driven by a cooling in the tropical Pacific Ocean resembling La Niña conditions, which generated a decrease in snowfall over the Andes due to suppressed frontal activity.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 55%

Spatio-Temporal Patterns of the 2010–2015 Extreme Hydrological Drought across the Central Andes, Argentina

Rivera

Penalba

Villalba

et al. 2017

Water

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“…S6). A similar impact has also been described downstream of the Santa Juana dam in Chile by Rangecroft et al (2016), where outflow from the constructed reservoir was used to support irrigation downstream. However, this mitigating effect of a reservoir (and thus increased flow) might not be directly visible after construction as further impoundments may temporarily decrease flow and intensify streamflow drought, as was shown for example downstream of the Three Gorges Dam in China (Dai et al, 2008).…”

Section: Interpretation Of the Impact Of Human Influencesmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…For drought research, several studies use a variation of this approach to investigate the impact of reservoirs on streamflow droughts by comparing (undisturbed) upstream records with downstream records before and after the construction of the reservoir (e.g. López-Moreno et al, 2009;Wen et al, 2011;Rangecroft et al, 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Human influences on streamflow drought characteristics in England and Wales

Tijdeman

Hannaford

Stahl

2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Human influences can affect streamflow drought characteristics and propagation. The question is where, when and why? To answer these questions, the impact of different human influences on streamflow droughts were assessed in England and Wales, across a broad range of climate and catchments conditions. We used a dataset consisting of catchments with near-natural flow as well as catchments for which different human influences have been indicated in the metadata ("Factors Affecting Runoff") of the UK National River Flow Archive (NRFA). A screening approach was applied on the streamflow records to identify human-influenced records with drought characteristics that deviated from those found for catchments with near-natural flow. Three different deviations were considered, specifically deviations in (1) the relationship between streamflow drought duration and the base flow index, BFI (specifically, BFIHOST, the BFI predicted from the hydrological properties of soils), (2) the correlation between streamflow and precipitation and (3) the temporal occurrence of streamflow droughts compared to precipitation droughts, i.e. an increase or decrease in streamflow drought months relative to precipitation drought months over the period of record. The identified deviations were then related to the indicated human influences. Results showed that the majority of catchments for which human influences were indicated did not show streamflow drought characteristics that deviated from those expected under near-natural conditions. For the catchments that did show deviating streamflow drought characteristics, prolonged streamflow drought durations were found in some of the catchments affected by groundwater abstractions. Weaker correlations between streamflow and precipitation were found for some of the catchments with reservoirs, water transfers or groundwater augmentation schemes. An increase in streamflow drought occurrence towards the end of their records was found for some of the catchments affected by groundwater abstractions and a decrease in streamflow drought occurrence for some of the catchments with either reservoirs or groundwater abstractions. In conclusion, the proposed screening approaches were sometimes successful in identifying streamflow records with deviating drought characteristics that are likely related to different human influences. However, a quantitative attribution of the impact of human influences on streamflow drought characteristics requires more detailed case-by-case information about the type and degree of all different human influences. Given that, in many countries, such information is often not readily accessible, the approaches adopted here could provide useful in targeting future efforts. In England and Wales specifically, the catchments with deviating streamflow drought characteristics identified in this study could serve as the starting point of detailed case study research.

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“…The unit of the DDD and DRD is month because the SSI is calculated based on monthly streamflow. For the time scale of droughts, the monthly unit prevents potential issues regarding the dependency of events (Rangecroft et al, ; Rudd et al, ). Additionally, to eliminate the effect of temporary rainfall (defined as the rainfall that occurs during the DDD , which does not restore the hydrological drought to normal) and the temporary shortage of precipitation (defined as the rainfall shortage that occurs during the DRD , which does not allow the hydrological drought to develop into maximum intensity) on the

\overset{italicIDS ((), t_{i})}{true}

(or

\overset{italicIRS ((), t_{i})}{true}

) during the drought development and recovery stages, the positive (or negative) of Δ TVDP i (orΔ TVRP i ) during the period of drought development (or recovery) was excluded.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hydrological Drought Instantaneous Propagation Speed Based on the Variable Motion Relationship of Speed‐Time Process

Chen

Yao

et al. 2018

Water Resources Research

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It is difficult to predict and track the propagation of a hydrological drought because it is hard to determine its propagation speed. We propose a useful framework for calculating the hydrological drought instantaneous propagation speed which includes the instantaneous development speed (IDS) and instantaneous recovery speed (IRS). First, the run theory was applied to subdivide the propagation of individual hydrological drought events into the development and recovery stages and to determine the individual propagation times (drought development duration and drought recovery duration). Then the hydrological drought instantaneous propagation speed of each hydrological drought event, including the IDS and IRS, were determined based on the variable motion relationship of speed‐time process commonly applied in physics. Finally, the optimal theoretical values of the IDS and IRS were evaluated using a cross‐validation method. Three hydrometric stations, located at the upstream catchment with less human activities influence, were chosen from different countries (China, the United States, and Germany) to demonstrate the satisfactory performance of this proposed framework. The results indicate that the variable motion relationship of speed‐time process can provide an assessment of the overall hydrological drought propagation and perform well for identifying the propagation time in these study areas. The optimal theoretical values of IDS (or IRS) obtained by the variable motion relationship can simulate the actual drought development duration (or drought recovery duration) of hydrological drought well. The sensitivity of IDS (or IRS) of hydrological drought is correlated with climate, catchment characteristics, and human activities that should be explored to improve hydrological drought propagation prediction.

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Multi-method assessment of reservoir effects on hydrological droughts in an arid region

Cited by 31 publications

References 42 publications

Spatio-Temporal Patterns of the 2010–2015 Extreme Hydrological Drought across the Central Andes, Argentina

Spatio-Temporal Patterns of the 2010–2015 Extreme Hydrological Drought across the Central Andes, Argentina

Human influences on streamflow drought characteristics in England and Wales

Hydrological Drought Instantaneous Propagation Speed Based on the Variable Motion Relationship of Speed‐Time Process

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