Assessing Meteorological and Agricultural Drought in Chitral Kabul River Basin Using Multiple Drought Indices

Abstract

Drought is a complex and poorly understood natural hazard in complex terrain and plains lie in foothills of Hindukush-Himalaya-Karakoram region of Central and South Asia. Few research studied climate change scenarios in the transboundary Chitral Kabul River Basin (CKRB) despite its vulnerability to global warming and importance as a region inhabited with more than 10 million people where no treaty on use of water exists between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This study examines the meteorological and agricultural drought between 2000 and 2018 and their future trends from 2020 to 2030 in the CKRB. To study meteorological and agricultural drought comprehensively, various single drought indices such as Precipitation Condition Index (PCI), Temperature Condition Index (TCI), Soil Moisture Condition Index (SMCI) and Vegetation Condition Index (VCI), and combined drought indices such as Scaled Drought Condition Index (SDCI) and Microwave Integrated Drought Index (MIDI) were utilized. As non-microwave data were used in MIDI, this index was given a new name as Non-Microwave Integrated Drought Index (NMIDI). Our research has found that 2000 was the driest year in the monsoon season followed by 2004 that experienced both meteorological and agricultural drought between 2000 and 2018. Results also indicate that though there exists spatial variation in the agricultural and meteorological drought, but temporally there has been a decreasing trend observed from 2000 to 2018 for both types of droughts. This trend is projected to continue in the future drought projections between 2020 and 2030. The overall study results indicate that drought can be properly assessed by integration of different data sources and therefore management plans can be developed to address the risk and signing new treaties.

Trends of Rainfall Variability and Drought Monitoring Using Standardized Precipitation Index in a Scarcely Gauged Basin of Northern Pakistan

“…The highest drought severity in the Skardu district (−6.06) was observed in the year of 1982 (Figure 5) with an intensity of −1.2 (Figure 6) with a dry spell of 5 months (Figure 4). The results of this study are in line with those of previous studies [45,70,71].…”

“…However, Ahmed et al (2017) [44] and Ullah et al (2018) [88] observed significant drought conditions in the mountainous region of Pakistan due to rainfall variability. Meteorological and agricultural drought conditions were also observed in the period of 2000-2018 for the Chitral Kabul River Basin [45]. It was observed by various researchers that the northern mountainous region of Pakistan was affected by moderate drought conditions during period of 1951-2010 [73,88,89].…”

“…From the abovementioned literature, it is apparent that rainfall and temperature are the main driving factors of drought; thus, there is a dire need to assess the temperature and precipitation patterns of GB [36]. Many studies have been conducted on drought throughout Pakistan [11,14,20,38,[42][43][44][45]; however, there is lack of drought and future prediction of rainfall studies in the mountainous region, especially in Gilgit-Baltistan. The GB region is part of the Upper Indus Basin (UIB), which is the source of water for the downstream region due to a nest of snow cover and glaciers.…”

Characterisation of meteorological drought at sub-catchment scale in Afghanistan using station-observed climate data

“…Progressive reduction of rainfall could have accelerated the other droughts between 2004 and 2011. This is in agreement with previous studies in Afghanistan [ 36 , 37 , 50 , 51 ]. The southern parts of the country have been strongly affected by climatic changes, especially in winter; and the northwest and the southwest of the country have been more affected by droughts due to alternations in rainfall and temperature [ 38 ].…”

A Remotely Sensed Study of the Impact of Meteorological Parameters on Vegetation for the Eastern Basins of Afghanistan

“…Most areas were affected by moderate and mild droughts. These results were in line with the other research made for the Kabul river basin [64], in which it was stated that 2000 and 2004 were the years with the worst meteorological drought conditions from the period from 2000 to 2018 and that the trend of meteorological drought changes in KRB was downward. During the studied period most of the northwest, southwest and some eastern areas of the eastern basins in Afghanistan had been influenced by drought.…”