Evaluation of Drought in the Ken River Basin in Bundelkhand Region, India

Abstract

The present study exhibits the analyses of the meteorological drought events in the Ken Basin using various indices viz., Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) for different time-scale and Rainfall Departure (RD) method. Precipitation data from 1990 to 2020 for six districts falling in the basin have been used to compute SPI and RD values. The computation of SPI series has been carried out for 1-month, 3-month, 6-month, 9-month and 12-month time-scales. The analysis indicated that the most parts of the basin experienced drought events in the years 2007, 2015 and 2017 region during the years. However, the basin was affected partially in the other drought years. The maximum severity of drought has been recorded as -65% and -52% in the year 1997 in Mahoba and Banda districts respectively. However, the up-reach parts of the basin were not affected in the year 1997.  The comparative analysis of RD and SPI exhibited a good correlation with 3-month and 6-month SPI time steps. It is found that the SPI-3 identifies the meteorological drought event appropriately followed by SPI-6.