Monitoring of Drought Event by Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) in Rajkot District, Gujarat, India

  Rahul Rachchh,  Neelkanth Bhatt

Drought is a slow onset phenomenon that affects people’s socio-economic activities to a great extent. It is one of the most dangerous natural hazards because it is very difficult to identify its onset. In India, Gujarat is one of the states which face the drought generally once in three years. Therefore, monitoring of drought by various drought indices has a great potential in mitigation the future droughts. In this paper the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) has been used to monitor drought in Rajkot district, Gujarat, India. The Standard Precipitation Index has been calculated for 3-month, and 6-month time scales to decide the effect of water scarcity on the various natural resources. The SPI value will give information about drought characteristics i.e. severity, frequency and spatial extent for Rajkot district. The monthly rainfall data of 5 rainfall stations named Morbi, Rajkot, Lodhika, Jasdan, Gondal, has been collected for the period of 1981-2010 to calculate the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI). The results suggest that the Rajkot region had felt severe drought in 1987 A.D. On an average there is a condition of drought in Rajkot district once in two years. It can be also concluded that since 2005 Rajkot district has not felt any major drought.

Keywords- - Drought, Standard precipitation Index (SPI), Rainfall

Unique Identification Number - IJEDR1401165
Page Number(s) - 917-921
Pubished in - Volume 2 | Issue 1 | March 2014
DOI (Digital Object Identifier) -   
Publisher - IJEDR (ISSN - 2321-9939)

  Rahul Rachchh,  Neelkanth Bhatt,   "Monitoring of Drought Event by Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) in Rajkot District, Gujarat, India", International Journal of Engineering Development and Research (IJEDR), ISSN:2321-9939, Volume.2, Issue 1, pp.917-921, March 2014, Available at :http://www.ijedr.org/papers/IJEDR1401165.pdf