Evaluating the risk of drought. Preliminary results

JUAN ANTONIO RIVERA; OLGA PENALBA

Hamburgo

Encuentro; CLARIS-LPB WP5 and WP6 meeting; 2012

CLARIS LPB

A spatial assessment of drought hazard was performed for the period 1962-2008 in La Plata Basin (LPB). For that purpose, we used the Drought Hazard Index (DHI), which was proposed by Shahid and Behrawan (2008). This is a weighted index based in drought frequencies, which was constructed as a sum of drought classes with a weighting scheme. It is observed that most of the regions with moderate to high drought hazard are located y the western and southern portions of LPB, while low drought hazard was obtained for Northeastern Argentina, Southern Brazil and Paraguay. The western portion of the region showed increases in precipitation totals during the second half of the 20th century, which led to an expansion of the agricultural frontier. In these regions is necessary to carry out contingency and mitigation plans in order to reduce the impacts of droughts. This map, along with a vulnerability map of the region will allow the construction of a drought risk map.