Class
Article
Graduation Year
2017
College
College of Engineering
Department
Civil and Environmental Engineering Department
Faculty Mentor
Jagath Kaluarachchi
Presentation Type
Poster Presentation
Abstract
Many operational drought indices focus on precipitation and temperature when depicting hydro-climatic anomalies and this perspective can be augmented by analyses and products that reflect the evaporative dynamics of drought. The linkage between wet environmental evaporation which is the ET rate of a surface with unlimited moisture and actual ET is leveraged in a new drought index based on complementary relationship. The proposed drought index, the Evapotranspiration Water deficit Drought Index (EWDI), is to compare the ET rate of a saturated surface with current water demand. To calculate EWDI, monthly actual ET estimated from an improved GG model using precipitation, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, and meteorological data. We presented that EWDI produces results that are consistent with the United States Drought Monitor which is widely used for drought monitoring. Also, we found that EWDI can serve as an indicator of rapidly evolving fast droughts developing over a few weeks and is able to capture drought conditions better when we use an accurate ET method.
Location
North Atrium
Start Date
4-13-2017 12:00 PM
End Date
4-13-2017 1:15 PM
Estimating drought conditions using an ET-based drought index
North Atrium
Many operational drought indices focus on precipitation and temperature when depicting hydro-climatic anomalies and this perspective can be augmented by analyses and products that reflect the evaporative dynamics of drought. The linkage between wet environmental evaporation which is the ET rate of a surface with unlimited moisture and actual ET is leveraged in a new drought index based on complementary relationship. The proposed drought index, the Evapotranspiration Water deficit Drought Index (EWDI), is to compare the ET rate of a saturated surface with current water demand. To calculate EWDI, monthly actual ET estimated from an improved GG model using precipitation, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, and meteorological data. We presented that EWDI produces results that are consistent with the United States Drought Monitor which is widely used for drought monitoring. Also, we found that EWDI can serve as an indicator of rapidly evolving fast droughts developing over a few weeks and is able to capture drought conditions better when we use an accurate ET method.