JWSS - Journal of Water and Soil Science

Groundwater is a major source of drought. Karstic aquifers are important sources of groundwater in the West and Kermanshah province. This study was performed to investigate the effects of the meteorological drought on the karstic aquifer with different conditions of development. The studied areas in this research included two karstic aquifers, Bistoon-Parau and Patagh mountain in Kermanshah province. In this study, we used monthly precipitation and springs discharge during a period of 20 years.  Accordingly, the SPI and SDI indices were used to investigate the different states of meteorological and hydrological droughts, respectively. To determine the relationship between meteorological droughts and groundwater, Pearson correlation was used; aalso, to determine the time delay, the correlation between the different time conditions (no delay and delay 1 to 6 months) of the SDI index and the SPI index was investigated. The results of the relationship between the meteorological drought and groundwater showed that both had a significant correlation (p-value: 0.01). Also,  based on the results of the correlation between different time conditions (no delay and delay 1 to 6 months) ,the SDI index was compared to the SPI index, showing that the time delay between the occurrence of meteorological drought and groundwater in the studied areas without time delay or a maximum one-month delay had happened. Based on the results, Pearson correlation coefficients between the SPI and SDI indices in the Bistoon-Parav region were more than those of the Patagh mountain region indicating the development of the Bistoon-Parav karst region, as compared with the Patagh Mountain.

In recent decades, land use changes have been one of the most important environmental issues worldwide. This study was carried out to investigate and analyse land use changes in dust sources of south and south-east Ahwaz and surrounding lands using remote sensing technique. Firstly, based on the standard precipitation index (SPI), the years 1986, 2002 and 2016 were selected as years with near normal situation. In the next step, land use maps of the study area were extracted using a Landsat satellite images and supervised classification methods. MNDWI index was used to increase the accuracy of image classification. In order to evaluate the efficiency of each method, the overall accuracy and kappa coefficient were used. Finally, to investigate land use change a post-classification comparison method was employed. According to research findings, in the first period (1986-2002), the area of vegetation, wet land with vegetation and water bodies have increased by 419%, 219% and 40.7%, respectively, in contrast, the area of barren and poor range has reduced by 36.6%. One of the major causes of these changes is human factors such as population growth and climate variables such as proper amounts of precipitation. In the second period (2002-2016), the area of wet land with vegetation, water bodies and vegetation has been decreased by 94%, 49.3% and 46.7%, respectively; in contrast, barren and poor range land has been increased by 45.4%. Recent droughts increase the temperature and incorrect and non-principled management of water resources has been effective in reducing green cover and water bodies and increasing in bare land. The results show that, during the three decades, built-up land has been increased by 157%, while River bed has decreased by 28.8%. These results indicate a total degradation in the region due to climate change and human activities.

Drought as a natural hazard is a gradual phenomenon, slowly affecting an area; it may last for many years and can have devastating effects on the natural environment and in human lives. Although drought forecasting plays an important role in the planning and management of water resource systems, the random nature of contributing factors contributing to the occurrence of and severity of droughts causes some difficulties in determination of the time when a drought begins or ends. The present research was planned to evaluate the capability of linear stochastic models, known as multiplicative Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) model, in the quantitative forecasting of drought in Isfahan province based on the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). To this end, the best SARIMA models were chosen for modelling the monthly rainfall data from 1990 to 2017 for every 10 synoptic stations in Isfahan province to forecast their monthly rainfall up to five years. The monthly time scale SPI values based on these predictions were used to assess the drought severity of different stations for the 2018- 2022 time period. The station results indicated a weak drought at the 2019- 2022 period for Isfahan, Kashan and Naeen, a severe drought in 2019 for Ardestan and Golpaygan, and a weak one in 2019 for the East of Isfahan, KabootarAbad and Shahreza stations. All other stations, except Golpayegan, Isfahan, Kashan and Naeen, faced a severe drought in 2018.