Drought Vulnerability Assessment Using Geospatial Data and Modeling Techniques: a Case Study of East Hararge Zone, Ethiopia
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2018-06-04
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Drought vulnerability assessment using Geospatial data and Modelling techniques: A case study of East Hararge Zone, Ethiopia
Chaltu Tadesse Amante
Drought is water related natural disaster, which affects a wide range of environmental factors. In 2015, eastern Ethiopia had experienced a severe drought. This drought had caused low crop production for both Belg and Summer harvests, poor livestock health and low water availability. This study investigated the effectiveness of Remote Sensing based drought indices as an indicator for drought assessment in arid and semi-arid areas, examined the relation between rainfall and vegetation indices and identified the most drought–vulnerable areas using geospatial data and modeling techniques in East Hararge Zone, Ethiopia which is a drought-prone area. To assess and examine spatiotemporal variation of seasonal drought patterns and severity, four drought indices namely, Aridity Index (AI), Water requirement satisfaction index (WRSI), Standard precipitation index (SPI) and Normalized difference vegetation Index (NDVI) are applied. SPOT and PROVA-V, MODIS, rainfall data for the years 2005-2015 were utilized as input data for the indices while crop yield data was used to validate the strength of indices in explaining the impact of drought. The result map was produced based on frequency maps of the four indices. This map shows that 40%, 54% and 6% of the total geographical area of the Zone were severe, moderate and mild vulnerable respectively. This result map could be valuable to make pre, and post–drought risk management plans by decision and policy makers.
Description
Keywords
Drought, East Hararge, AI, Ndv, Spi, Spot, Proba-V, Modis, Wrsi