Data mining of drought probability in Iran

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 PhD Student of Combating Desertification, Faculty of Natural resources, University of Tehran

2 PhD student, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran

3 PhD in RS and GIS, faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran

Abstract

Drought in recent years has made high losses to the country that must be reduced by using logical management as much as possible. For this purpose, it is necessary to compare the affected areas by the disaster and locate priority management actions. The aim of this study is determining the spatial and temporal patterns of drought risks and providing the drought hazard index map of Iran. The monthly rainfall data from 46 stations were selected in this study and the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) was deployed at 6 and 12 months’ time scales for generating the map of drought hazard index. The IDWand Natural Break methods were elaborated in GIS environment for zoning and classification, respectively. The results showed that in 6 month time scale, most of the country of the high hazard class and lowest is the average hazard class and for the 12 month time scale, almost half of the country is in very high hazard class and the lowest area is the low hazard class. In general, the possibility of drought in this study showed that when the drought severity increases, its probability decreases.

Keywords