Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Drought Using the Storage Data of Agricultural Reservoirs in Chungnam Province in 2015

Abstract

The objective of this study was to analyze the temporal and spatial characteristics of agricultural drought by tracking the daily reservoir storage in Chungnam province. All daily records of the percent of reservoir storage from 2000 to 2015 were collected for 130 irrigation reservoirs from the RIMS (Rural Infrastructure Management System). The temporal change of province-wide average reservoir storage and the statistics showed that the annual average and minimum percent of reservoir storage in 2015 were extremely low like as those in the historical drought years of 2001 and 2012. The minimum reservoir storage on record was a 41 % at the end of September and remained far less than its historical average even until the end of the year. Furthermore, the annual average reservoir storage (68.3 %) recorded the lowest on record since 2000. In addition, about half of 130 major irrigation reservoirs in Chungnam fell into the risk of water shortage below 30 % full, and, in terms of annual minimum reservoir storage, the 79 reservoirs yielded lower storage in 2015 comparing with the measured in another drought year, 2001. On the other hand, irrigation reservoirs of comparatively worse storage condition revealed to be mostly located on the inside, such as Cheongyang-gun and Hongsung-gun. Conclusively, the low reservoir storage, still far below average even on December 2015, induced a serious concern about that more extreme drought would happen in the next spring.