Theme-6-4-Drought identification using streamflows.

Abstract

Water management under drought conditions is a subject of great relevance to our country. In order to manage the drought one needs to know the characteristics of the drought, its duration, areal extent and its severity. In this paper a methodology to identify these parameters from the available historic/forecasted flow data is proposed following a modified procedure of Herbest et al.(1966) originally suggested for analysis of drought using rainfall data. This modified methodology is applied to 52 years streamflow series (1930-31 to 1981-82) of Bhadra river in Karnataka. The identified droughts by the proposed methodology are concurrent with the historically realised droughts, thus proving the viability and applicability of the methodology in identification of drought conditions.