DROUGHT HAZARD ASSESSMENT IN IRAQ USING SPI AND GIS SYSTEMS

The aim of this research is to find out drought periods, percent of occurrence and spatial distribution of drought in the whole of Iraq in order to reduce it and take the necessary precautions to face it. The study utilizes the standardized precipitation index (SPI) to determine drought depending on monthly rainfall data that were collected from 24 stations during the period 1950-2016. Short term drought represents agricultural drought taken for six months (SPI 6) and long term drought represents hydrological drought taken for twelve months (SPI 12). The results showed that the study area (Iraq) was exposed to varied drought especially in the last decades (1997- 2016) for both long and short terms. To represent the results of SPI for April and October of 2015, the Geographic information system (GIS) was used with the aid of Inverse distance weighted (IDW). It can be seen that these months suffered from varied drought levels in different regions of Iraq ranging from mild to extreme drought.