SPATIOTEMPORAL ANALYSIS OF HISTORICAL DROUGHTS IN THE CENTRAL ANATOLIA, TURKEY

Abstract

The spatiotemporal characteristics of meteorological droughts in the Central Anatolia, a semiarid region in Turkey, are determined utilizing the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) as a measure for drought severity. With a surface area of nearly 150,000 km² the region is subjected to frequent and widespread drought events. The regions contains upstream drainage areas of the Kızılırmak and Sakarya rivers, two major water resources of the country supplying flows to several multipurpose reservoirs along their course. Using the temporal and spatial characteristics of monthly SPI, drought intensity-areal extent-frequency curves for various return periods are constructed for the region, and then the spatio-temporal characteristics of selected historical droughts are evaluated. The results indicate that the region is usually under the influence of droughts with low return periods, in other words, high frequency droughts during the study period (from 1956 to 2004). But, the areal extent of droughts may be significant to adversely affect the water resources of the region. The overall evaluation of study results reveal that this method can provide useful information for spatial and temporal variations of droughts and can be utilized for water resources management in this region. 

Keywords

• Drought, SPI, frequency curve, semi-arid region, the Central Anatolian Region, Turkey.

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