Abstract

ZABALETA-ORTEGA, Álvaro José; NOBLES-OROZCO, Eglendis; MERCADO-FERNANDEZ, Teobaldis  and  DIAZ-CARVAJAL, Ángel. Drought threat assessment in the department of Cordoba, Colombia. Rev. ing. univ. Medellín [online]. 2022, vol.21, n.40, pp.87-100.  Epub Nov 01, 2022. ISSN 1692-3324.  https://doi.org/10.22395/rium.v21n40a6.

Water scarcity in areas with abundant rainfall due to drought is, in a sense, contradictory; however, the effects of such a situation can have dramatic con sequences on the productivity and development of communities. This work, derived from a finished research and financed with resources of the authors, evaluated the threat by drought in the department of Cordoba, Colombia, by means of the Standardized Index of Precipitation (SPI), for a critical scenario defined by the maximum intensities of events with occurrence of two years of return, using the information of 40 meteorological stations; evaluating the SPI to scales of 3 and 6 months and characterizing this index in terms of intensity, duration, frequency and magnitude. The results show the occurrence of droughts of moderate intensity, with frequency of 58 % and 56 % in quarterly and semestral scale respectively, resulting in threat by drought in medium and high categories for some areas of the department; which indicates that, although on the study area there are registered abundant rainfalls, it can be presented scarcity of the resource in the long term caused by droughts.

Keywords : drought; precipitation; standardized precipitation index; Gumbel; extreme events; intensity; duration; frequency..

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