Studying Onset and Evolution of Agricultural Drought in Mekong River Basin through Hydrologic Modeling

Palanisamy, Bakkiyalakshmi; Narasimhan, Balaji; Paul, Sabu; Srinivasan, Raghavan; Wangpimool, Winai; Lim, Sopheap; Sayasane, Rattykone

doi:10.3390/w13243622

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Studying Onset and Evolution of Agricultural Drought in Mekong River Basin through Hydrologic Modeling

Bakkiyalakshmi Palanisamy

^2,*,

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⁵

⁵ and

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Department of Agriculture Engineering, Saveetha Engineering College, Chennai 602105, India

Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, Chennai 620036, India

Department of Project Implementation, City of Alexandria, Alexandria, VA 22314, USA

⁴

Spatial Sciences Laboratory, Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA

⁵

Technical Support Division, Mekong River Commission Secretariat, Vientiane 01000, Laos

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Academic Editor: Guido D’Urso

Water 2021, 13(24), 3622; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13243622

Received: 6 November 2021 / Revised: 2 December 2021 / Accepted: 6 December 2021 / Published: 16 December 2021

(This article belongs to the Section Water, Agriculture and Aquaculture)

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Abstract

Departures in precipitation from the normal are the cause of the onset of agricultural drought. In this study, we aim to identify extreme precipitation deficits using an index called Percent Normal (PN). We applied the proposed PN index to the agriculturally productive Mekong River Basin (MRB) to evaluate the propagation of precipitation deficits into agricultural drought based on the change in slope and mean of the precipitation, soil moisture and evapotranspiration anomalies. The results of the study showed the proposed PN index identified historical droughts in the years 1992, 1997–1998 and 2000–2006 in MRB; of these, 1992 was shown to be the longest drought, which lasted from the 43rd week (October) of 1991 to the 49th week (December) of 1994. The short-term but extreme drought was identified to occur in 2005 with below-normal precipitation that lasted for more than a year. An immediate effect of precipitation deficit was observed in evapotranspiration (ET) and soil water for agricultural (Thailand) and forested regions (Parts of Cambodia) of the basin with <5 weeks lag. We conclude that the drought indices adopted in this study are suitable to identify the small and long-term drought events, which will facilitate the development of a drought-resilient agricultural production system. View Full-Text

Keywords: agriculture; deficit indices; drought development; propagation; SWAT; Mekong River Basin

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MDPI and ACS Style

Palanisamy, B.; Narasimhan, B.; Paul, S.; Srinivasan, R.; Wangpimool, W.; Lim, S.; Sayasane, R. Studying Onset and Evolution of Agricultural Drought in Mekong River Basin through Hydrologic Modeling. Water 2021, 13, 3622. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13243622

AMA Style

Palanisamy B, Narasimhan B, Paul S, Srinivasan R, Wangpimool W, Lim S, Sayasane R. Studying Onset and Evolution of Agricultural Drought in Mekong River Basin through Hydrologic Modeling. Water. 2021; 13(24):3622. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13243622

Chicago/Turabian Style

Palanisamy, Bakkiyalakshmi, Balaji Narasimhan, Sabu Paul, Raghavan Srinivasan, Winai Wangpimool, Sopheap Lim, and Rattykone Sayasane. 2021. "Studying Onset and Evolution of Agricultural Drought in Mekong River Basin through Hydrologic Modeling" Water 13, no. 24: 3622. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13243622

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Studying Onset and Evolution of Agricultural Drought in Mekong River Basin through Hydrologic Modeling

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