Drought indices supporting drought management in transboundary watersheds subject to climate alterations

There is growing concern in Iraq about the inefficiency of reactive drought management practices. Corresponding actions are largely characterized as emergency-based responses that treat the symptoms of drought rather than consider the vulnerability components associated with impacts. The Diyala wate...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inWater policy Vol. 17; no. 5; pp. 865 - 886
Main Authors Al-Faraj, Furat A. M., Scholz, Miklas, Tigkas, Dimitris, Boni, Martino
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford IWA Publishing 01.10.2015
Subjects
Anthropogenic factors
Basins
Change agents
Climate change
Components
Decision makers
Drought
Drought index
Emergency management
Emergency preparedness
Emergency response
Environmental risk
Governance
Human influences
Indexes
Natural disasters
Planning
Policies
Precipitation
Prone
Risk management
River basins
Rivers
Standardized precipitation index
Symptoms
Transboundary waters
Trends
Vulnerability
Water shortages
Watersheds
Iran
Turkey
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Summary:There is growing concern in Iraq about the inefficiency of reactive drought management practices. Corresponding actions are largely characterized as emergency-based responses that treat the symptoms of drought rather than consider the vulnerability components associated with impacts. The Diyala watershed shared between Iraq and Iran has been used as an example transboundary river basin marked by ineffectiveness of drought management. The standardized precipitation index and the reconnaissance drought index were used to determine the historical meteorological drought episodes and analysis indicated climate change-induced alterations in the area. Spatiotemporal drought maps were drawn, which can be used for the identification of drought prone areas and assist with proactive planning. This paper discusses the underlying causes of the impairments of drought management policies, and the challenges and difficulties accompanying the governance of drought in Iraq. Given the influence of climate change and the upstream anthropogenic pressures, the time has come to adopt a gradual nation-wide transition step to drought risk planning incorporating a management approach at the transboundary scale. Moreover, the institutional and technical water vulnerability components associated with drought management should be considered in an integrated manner. The paper presents a generic technical template to support decision-makers in drought risk management.
ISSN:1366-7017
1996-9759
DOI:10.2166/wp.2014.237