Assessment of Drought in Sabarkantha District Using Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI)

A drought is a period of below-average precipitation in a given region, resulting in prolonged shortages in its water supply, whether atmospheric, surface water or ground water. A drought can last for months or years, or may be declared after as few as 15 days. It can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region and harm to the local economy. Annual dry seasons in the tropics significantly increase the chances of a drought developing and subsequent bush fires. Assessment of droughts can be helpful to implement drought mitigation strategies and measures, before they occur again. A wide variety of concepts are applied for drought assessment. In present study, RDI were developed for assessment of the drought for Sabarkantha district. The RDI considers two hydro-meteorological variables (i. e. , rainfall and potential evapotranspiration) that affect the droughts. For the assessment of drought, rainfall and PET data of 100 years (i. e. , 1901 -2001) were used of Sabarkantha station. For calculating the indices DrinC software tool was used. Dry periods were calculated using analysis of RDI-3, RDI-6, RDI-9 and RDI 12. It is better to use RDI of 12 months index for analysis of drought for this study.