Shifting of Meteorological to Hydrological Drought Risk at Regional Scale

Abstract

The drought along with climate variation has become a serious issue for human society and the ecosystem in the arid region like the Soan basin (the main source of water resources for the capital of Pakistan and the Pothohar arid region). The increasing concerns about drought in the study area have brought about the necessity of spatiotemporal analysis and assessment of the linkage between different drought types for an early warning system. Hence, the streamflow drought index (SDI) and standard precipitation index (SPI) were used for the analysis of the spatiotemporal variations in hydrological and meteorological drought, respectively. Furthermore, statistical approaches, including regression analysis, trend analysis using Mann Kendall, and moving average, have been used for investigation of the linkage between these drought types, the significance of the variations, and lag time identification, respectively. The overall analysis indicated an increase in the frequency of both hydrological and meteorological droughts during the last three decades. Moreover, a strong linkage between hydrological and meteorological droughts was found; and this relationship varied on the spatiotemporal scale. Significant variations between hydrological and meteorological droughts also resulted during the past three (3) decades. These discrepancies would be because of different onset and termination times and specific anthropogenic activities in the selected basin for the minimization of hydrological drought. Conclusively, the present study contributes to comprehending the linkage between hydrological and meteorological droughts and, thus, could have a practical use for local water resource management practices at the basin scale.

Natural streamflow reconstruction and quantification of hydrological drought in the Soan River basin, Pakistan

“…The trend analysis showed that in the case of the Dhoke Pathan basin, a declining trend of precipitation (Figure 4a), maximum temperature (Figure 4b), and minimum temperature (Figure 4c) increasing trend was observed during the years 1991-2015. Our results matched with Muhammad et al (2020) and Sarwar et al (2022), who performed analyses for precipitation, streamflow, maximum temperature, and minimum temperature for the Dhoke Pathan basin for the years 1983-2015. The overall results indicated that the declining trend of precipitation in the Soan River basin runoff also decreased due to the lack of precipitation, and hydrological drought occurred more rapidly (Hussain et al, 2021;Muhammad et al, 2020;Sarwar et al, 2022;Shahid et al, 2018;Waseem et al, 2015).…”

“…In the Soan River basin, land use and land cover decrease the runoff due to the increase of barren land converted into agricultural land (Muhammad et al., 2020). In this study, the temporal results of hydrological drought increased in disturbed periods because streamflow decreased significantly in the Soan River basin due to the lack of precipitation, land use, land cover, and agriculture practices increased from 1999 to 2015 (Muhammad et al., 2020; Sarwar et al., 2022; Shahid et al., 2018).…”

“…(2020) and Sarwar et al. (2022), who performed analyses for precipitation, streamflow, maximum temperature, and minimum temperature for the Dhoke Pathan basin for the years 1983–2015. The overall results indicated that the declining trend of precipitation in the Soan River basin runoff also decreased due to the lack of precipitation, and hydrological drought occurred more rapidly (Hussain et al., 2021; Muhammad et al., 2020; Sarwar et al., 2022; Shahid et al., 2018; Waseem et al., 2015).…”

“…The temperature is also an important climatic variable. Due to the increasing temperature, evapotranspiration increased from the surface of the basin, and streamflow decreased significantly, causing the occurrence of hydrological drought in the Soan River basin (Hussain et al., 2021; Muhammad et al., 2020; Sarwar et al., 2022; Shahid et al., 2018; Waseem et al., 2015).…”

“…A few studies have been conducted on the streamflow Muhammad et al (2020) and Sarwar et al (2022), but reconstruction of natural streamflow could not be done in the Soan River basin. That's why reconstructing natural streamflow by using the SWAT hydrological model is the novelty of this study.…”