AgriMetSoft


What is the first kind of drought that happens in a region?

Drought is perhaps the most complex natural hazard. It is often generally defined as a temporary meteorological event that stems from the lack of precipitation over an extended period of time compared with some long-term average condition (e.g. precipitation). But droughts develop slowly, are difficult to detect and have many facets in any single region.

Four types of droughts could be recognized (American Meteorological Society, 2004), which include:

1- Meteorological drought is defined as a lack of precipitation over a region for a period of time. Precipitation has been commonly used for meteorological drought analysis.

2- Agricultural drought related to a shortage of available water for plant growth, and is assessed as insufficient soil moisture to replace evapotranspirative losses,

3- Hydrological drought is related to a period with inadequate surface and subsurface water resources for established water uses of a given water resources management system.

4- the socio-economic drought which is associated to the failure of water resources systems to meet water demands (Wilhite and Glantz 1985). Therefore, according to this classification, the first one is meteorological drought.

Name: Daneil