Drought is a harmful and slow natural phenomenon that has significant effects on the economy, social life,agriculture and environment of the country. Due to its slow process it is difficult to study this phenomenon. RemoteSensing and GIS tools play a key role in studying different hazards like droughts. The main objective of the study wasto investigate drought risk by using GIS and Remote Sensing techniques in district Khushab, Pakistan. Landsat ETMimages for the year 2003, 2009 and 2015 were utilized for spatial and temporal analysis of agricultural andmeteorological drought. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) andrainfall anomaly indices were calculated to identify the drought prone areas in the study area. To monitormeteorological drought SPI values were used and NDVI was calculated for agricultural drought. These indices wereintegrated to compute the spatial and temporal drought maps. Three zones; no drought, slight drought and moderatedrought were identified. Final drought map shows that 30.21% of the area faces moderate drought, 28.36% faces slightdrought while nearly 41.3% faces no drought situation. Drought prevalence and severity is present more in the southernpart of Khushab district than the northern part. Most of the northern part is not under any type of drought. Thus, anoverall outcome of this study shows that risk areas can be assessed appropriately by integration of various data sourcesand thereby management plans can be prepared to deal with the hazard.

No abstract

Agriculture is greatly impacted by climate change, which can lead to situations of food security or insecurity at both regional and global levels. Pakistan is predicted to experience an area reduction and geographical shifting of major crops in the near future. In the present study, we assessed the potential future distribution of wheat and maize in Pakistan. Based on current locations of these crops, we ran a Maxent species distribution model to predict future changes in crop distributions. We used 58 presence records for wheat and 48 presence records for maize. The model simulated current and future climate change scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) based on the CMIP5 model, MPI-ESM-LR. Results from our model showed a decline in production area, with a 30-35% reduction in wheat and a 23-36% reduction in maize in the year 2070, depending upon which climate change scenario was modelled (i.e. RCP 4.5 or RCP 8.5). The model predictions were highly accurate, with test AUC values of 0.88 for wheat and 0.89 for maize. A jackknife test for variable importance indicated that irrigation, precipitation seasonality and precipitation of the warmest quarter are the most important environmental variables determining the potential geographic distribution of the crops. Due to the varying severity and nature of climate impacts, adaptation strategies are needed. This study can aid policy makers in devising policies that can help reduce the threat of future food insecurity in the region.

Drought is a harmful and slow natural phenomenon that has significant effects on the economy, social life,agriculture and environment of the country. Due to its slow process it is difficult to study this phenomenon. RemoteSensing and GIS tools play a key role in studying different hazards like droughts. The main objective of the study wasto investigate drought risk by using GIS and Remote Sensing techniques in district Khushab, Pakistan. Landsat ETMimages for the year 2003, 2009 and 2015 were utilized for spatial and temporal analysis of agricultural andmeteorological drought. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) andrainfall anomaly indices were calculated to identify the drought prone areas in the study area. To monitormeteorological drought SPI values were used and NDVI was calculated for agricultural drought. These indices wereintegrated to compute the spatial and temporal drought maps. Three zones; no drought, slight drought and moderatedrought were identified. Final drought map shows that 30.21% of the area faces moderate drought, 28.36% faces slightdrought while nearly 41.3% faces no drought situation. Drought prevalence and severity is present more in the southernpart of Khushab district than the northern part. Most of the northern part is not under any type of drought. Thus, anoverall outcome of this study shows that risk areas can be assessed appropriately by integration of various data sourcesand thereby management plans can be prepared to deal with the hazard.