Development of Soil Moisture Drought Index to Characterize Droughts
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Abstract
A new drought index termed the “soil moisture drought index (SODI)” is developed to characterize droughts. The premise of the index is based on how much water is required to attain soil moisture at field capacity. SODI captures variations of precipitation, temperature, and soil moisture over time. Three widely used drought indices, including the standardized precipitation index (SPI), the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI), and the self-calibrated palmer drought index (sc-PDSI) are compared with SODI along with local hydrological variables such as streamflow, reservoir storage, and groundwater level for cross-validation. The result indicates that SODI reacts more evidently to relate changes in precipitation and temperature than SPI and SPEI by characterizing soil moisture over time. Results also show that SODI outperforms the existing drought indices in the sense that SODI can detect and quantify the extended severe droughts associated with climate variability and change. SODI will add momentum to build a case toward the use of soil moisture information for drought analysis in a changing environment.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge Idaho Water Resources Research Institute (IWRRI) for providing USGS 104B grant support for this study. The SODI software will be available at http://water.cals.uidaho.edu once it is completed.
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Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 20 • Issue 11 • November 2015
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© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 27, 2014
Accepted: Feb 18, 2015
Published online: Mar 23, 2015
Discussion open until: Aug 23, 2015
Published in print: Nov 1, 2015
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