Regional analysis of streamflow drought: a case study in southwestern Iran

摘要

Droughts are complex natural hazards that, to a varying degree, affect some parts of the world every year. The range of drought impacts is related to drought occurring in different stages of the hydrological cycle and usually different types of droughts such as meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, and socio-economical are the most distinguished types. Hydrological drought includes streamflow and groundwater droughts. In this paper, streamflow drought was analyzed using the method of truncation level (at 70 % level) by daily discharges at 54 stations in southwestern Iran. Frequency analysis was carried out for annual maximum series of drought deficit volume and duration. 35 factors such as physiographic, climatic, geologic and vegetation were studied to carry out the regional analysis. According to conclusions of factor analysis, the six most effective factors include watershed area, the sum rain from December to February, the percentage of area with NDVI ＜0.1, the percentage of convex area, drainage density and the minimum of watershed elevation, explained 89.2 % of variance. The homogenous regions were determined by cluster analysis and discriminate function analysis. The suitable multivariate regression models were ascertained and evaluated for hydrological drought deficit volume with 2 years return period. The significance level of models was 0.01. The conclusion showed that the watershed area is the most effective factor that has a high correlation with drought deficit volume. Moreover, drought duration was not a suitable index for regional analysis.