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DOI 10.1007/s11269-010-9665-1
Part of this paper has been presented at EWRAs 7th International Conference on Water
Resources Conservancy and Risk Reduction Under Climatic Instability and it is submitted
for review and possible publication in a Special Issue of the Journal of Water Resources
Management (WARM).
L. Vasiliades (B) A. Loukas N. Liberis
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Thessaly, Pedion Areos, 38334 Volos, Greece
e-mail: lvassil@uth.gr
URL: http://civ.uth.gr
1088 L. Vasiliades et al.
1 Introduction
Droughts are long-term phenomena affecting large regions causing significant dam-
ages in human lives and economic losses. Droughts are the costliest natural disaster
of the world and affect more people than any other natural disaster. Therefore, it
is important to develop early warning systems to mitigate drought effects (WMO
2000; Svoboda et al. 2002; Mendicino and Versace 2007; Wilhite et al. 2007). Four
types of droughts could be recognized: (a) meteorological drought resulted from
a lack of precipitation, (b) agricultural drought related to a shortage of available
water for plant growth, and is assessed as insufficient soil moisture to replace
evapotranspirative losses, (c) hydrological drought, which is related to a period
with inadequate surface and subsurface water resources to supply established water
uses, and (d) the socio-economic drought which is associated to the failure of water
resources systems to meet water demands (Wilhite and Glantz 1985; AMS 1997).
Among the different types of droughts, the hydrological component is the most
important given the high dependence of many activities (industrial, urban water
supply and hydropower generation) on surface water resources. The simplest way to
monitor drought is to use drought indices that calculate drought severity, duration
and areal extent for each drought type. Several drought indices were developed,
based on different variables and parameters, to assess drought types (Tate and
Gustard 2000; Heim 2002; Keyantash and Dracup 2002). Indices for monitoring
climate variability and drought impacts have long been used as the basis for planning
and assessing the need for domestic and international aid to affected populations.
Associated with this has been an ongoing debate as to which indices are the most
reliable and appropriate to aid decisions by government and private agencies as to
when and where to provide financial assistance.
A deficit of precipitation has various impacts on different components of hydro-
logical cycle (river flow, groundwater) and components of biosphere (ecosystems,
humans). For example, soil moisture conditions respond to precipitation anomalies
on a relatively short scale. Peters et al. (2005) have shown that the effects of
the meteorological droughts on groundwater are the decrease of the frequency of
drought events and a shift in the drought distribution. Groundwater, river flow and
reservoir storage reflect the long-term precipitation anomalies. These anomalies
allow different drought types to be defined conceptually and to be described in
terms of various drought indices. Numerous studies have been published on the
development and applications of drought indices derived from hydrometeorological
data (e.g. Palmer drought severity index, surface water supply index, standardized
precipitation index, effective drought index, rainfall deciles), and from satellite data
(e.g. normalized difference vegetation index, enhanced vegetation index, vegetation
condition index; Quiring 2009; White and Walcott 2009). Most of the drought indices
derived from meteorological data, primarily precipitation and temperature, could be
used to assess not only meteorological droughts but also agricultural and hydrological
droughts. These data are normally readily available throughout the world, which
partially explains the variety of such indices and the general popularity of this
A Water Balance Derived Drought Index for Pinios River Basin, Greece 1089
were delineated according to the major tributaries of Pinios river using GIS, show
high complexity of hydrological processes with a marked seasonal and interannual
variability. The Water Framework Directive defines the river basin as the only scale
for applying measures for water resources protection and management. The concept
at subwatershed scale was adopted because it encompasses the areal extent of a
drought event, since water managers are interested in streamflow only at a small
number of points in space (i.e. basin and subbasin outlets, reservoir inlets and outlets
etc.). Surface runoff at these points provides an integrated measure of spatially
distributed runoff.
2 Study Area
Pinios river basin is located in central Greece and is a plain region surrounded
by high mountains. The plain region with an area of about 4,000 km2 is one of
the most productive agricultural regions of Greece. The main crops cultivated are
cotton, wheat and maize, whereas, apple, apricot, cherry, olive trees and grapes are
cultivated at the foothills of the eastern mountains. Pinios River and its tributaries
traverse the plain area, and the basin total drainage area is about 9,500 km2 (Fig. 1).
The climate is continental at the western and central side of Pinios river basin
and Mediterranean at the eastern side. Winters are cold and wet and summers
are hot and dry with large temperature difference between the two seasons. Mean
annual precipitation over Thessaly region is about 700 mm and it is distributed
unevenly in space and time. The mean annual precipitation varies from about
400 mm at the central plain area to more than 1850 mm at the western mountain
peaks. Generally, rainfall is rare from June to August. The mountain areas receive
significant amounts of snow during the winter months and transient snowpacks
develop. The waters of Pinios River are used primarily for irrigation and for use in
hydroelectric power plant located at Smokovo. The intense and extensive cultivation
of water demanding crops has lead to a remarkable water demand increase, which
is usually fulfilled by the over-exploitation of groundwater resources. For example,
nearly 65,000 ha are irrigated with surface waters and more than 210,000 ha of
agricultural area are supplied by groundwater. The overexploitation of the ground-
water, especially during extended dry periods, has led to the deterioration of the
already disturbed water balance and the degradation of water resources. Thessaly
experienced severe, extreme and persistent droughts during the periods from mid
to late 1970s, from late 1980s to early 1990s and the first years of 2000s (Loukas
and Vasiliades 2004; Vasiliades and Loukas 2009). These three drought periods
were quite remarkable and affected large areas. During these three periods, the
monthly and annual precipitation was significantly bellow normal in Thessaly. The
prolonged and significant decrease of monthly and annual precipitation has a dra-
matic impact on natural vegetation, agricultural production and the water resources
of the region. The above-mentioned problem became more evident during the last
two decades. Various water resources management measures have been proposed
to deal with the water deficit of Thessaly plain. These measures can be categorized
into water demand management measures and water supply management measures
(Loukas et al. 2007).
A Water Balance Derived Drought Index for Pinios River Basin, Greece 1091
3 Methodology
This study evaluates hydrological drought detection using a water balance derived
drought index. The study subwatersheds have no discharge observations at their
outlets. Hence, the use of simulated discharges is mandatory. Furthermore, it is
impossible in a hydrological drought monitoring system to have streamflow mea-
surements in the important junctions of the major tributaries of a large river basin.
For these reasons, the monthly conceptual water balance UTHBAL model (Loukas
et al. 2007) has been used to reconstruct and produce simulated runoff data.
1092 L. Vasiliades et al.
The UTHBAL model allocates the watershed runoff into three components, the
surface runoff, the interflow runoff and the baseflow runoff using a soil moisture
mechanism with the first priority of the balancing being the fulfillment of actual
evapotranspiration. The model separates the total precipitation into rainfall and
snowfall, because the correct separation of precipitation is essential for accurate
runoff simulation. The rain-snow percentage is estimated using a logistic relationship
based on mean monthly temperature and the snowmelt is calculated estimated
using the simple degree-day method. A complete mathematical formulation of the
UTHBAL model could be found in a recent paper (Loukas et al. 2007). The
UTHBAL model requires monthly values of mean temperature, precipitation, and
potential evapotranspiration and produces values for actual evapotranspiration, soil
moisture, groundwater and surface runoff. The input time series were estimated
using the methods presented in the previous paragraphs. The UTHBAL model
has six parameters to be optimized in order to estimate watershed runoff. In this
study, model parameter values were taken from previous application of UTHBAL
in selected watersheds of Pinios river basin (Loukas et al. 2007; Vasiliades and
Loukas 2009). The simulation of the runoff in the ungauged sub-watersheds was
achieved using regional estimates of model parameters based on their topographical,
geological and land cover-land use characteristics.
The produced synthetic runoff time series were used for the estimation of hy-
drological drought. McKee et al. (1993) select the Gamma distribution for fitting
monthly precipitation data series, and suggest that the procedure can be applied to
other variables relevant to drought, e.g., streamflow or reservoir contents. In pur-
suing this suggestion for model-based runoff, we note that distributions other than
the Gamma may be more appropriate, depending on the runoff variables sample
characteristics (especially skew and kurtosis), which vary greatly with geographic
location and degree of temporal aggregation. For example, Shukla and Wood (2008)
showed that the two-parameter log normal (LN) distribution provides a better fit
A Water Balance Derived Drought Index for Pinios River Basin, Greece 1093
at high extremes than the Gamma distribution, whereas, the Gamma distribution
perform better for low runoff values for the Feather River basin, at California, USA.
Lpez-Moreno et al. (2009) chose the Pearson type III distribution for modeling
monthly streamflow in the Tagus basin based on L-moments ratios diagrams. In
this study, skewness coefficients of simulated discharge values were estimated for
all study watersheds for the period of analysis on monthly basis. The skewness
test of normality (Snedecor and Cochran 1980) and the Filliben probability plot
correlation test (Filliben 1975) were both applied at the 10% significance level for
each month (24 tests per subwatershed). The results show that for all watersheds and
almost all months (except the summer months) are statistically significant at the 10%
significance level. To remove skewness, the Box-Cox transformation was used since
it is capable to deal with non-linear data over widely varying hydro-climatic regimes
(Box and Cox 1964; Salas et al. 1980). The Box-Cox transformation takes the form:
X 1
, = 0
Y= (1)
ln(X), = 0
The transformed runoff values are then standardized to translate into the standard
normal distribution as function of Z , where Z is the variable in normalizing process,
using:
Y Y
Z WBI = (2)
Y
where, X are the values of the original time series of surface runoff, Y are the
values of the transformed time series, is a parameter for which the values of the
transformed time series (Y) are normally distributed, Z WBI are the values of the
standardized time series, Y is the mean value of the transformed time series and Y
is the standard deviation of the transformed time series. The Box-Cox transformation
requires finding an optimal value of that yields a transformed variable with a
distribution close to normal. The optimal values of were found with the maximum
likelihood approach (Press et al. 2007). The transformation and standardization
have been performed on monthly basis, meaning that the monthly values have been
analyzed individually and separately for each month of the year. The transformed
and standardized runoff time series were used as indicators of hydrological drought
severity. This normalization approach is different from the threshold level approach
for streamflow deficits (Tallaksen and van Lanen 2004) and applied in several studies
(e.g. Hisdal and Tallaksen 2003; Tsakiris et al. 2007; Pandey et al. 2008; Wu et al.
2008). Once standardized the strength of the anomaly is classified as set out in
Table 2. This table also contains the corresponding probabilities of occurrence of
each severity level arising naturally from the Normal probability density function.
Thus, at a given location for an individual month, moderate dry periods (Z WBI 1)
have an occurrence probability of 15.9%, whereas, extreme dry periods (Z WBI 2)
have an event probability of 2.3%. Extreme values in the Z WBI will, by definition, oc-
cur with the same frequency at all locations. Negative Z WBI values indicate droughts
and positive Z WBI values denote wet weather conditions (Table 2). Magnitude and
duration of hydrological drought, as well as the probability of emergence from
drought, are determined from the Z WBI index. One major advantage of the Z WBI
is its spatial invariance across different climate regions.
1094 L. Vasiliades et al.
4 ResultsDiscussion
A hydrological drought index for Pinios river basin at subwatershed scale using a
monthly water balance model is developed for operational use. Furthermore, by
comparing the proposed drought index with meteorological drought indices (the
SPI at multiple timescales and the Palmer drought indices) it tries to operationally
identify the suitable meteorological drought indices for hydrological management
purposes. Table 3 shows the Pearson correlation coefficients between the water
balance derived drought index (Z WBI ), and the meteorological drought indices.
For river discharges, correlations are positive, but there are important differences
with regard to examined meteorological drought indices. Higher correlations have
been obtained with the 3-month SPI and 6-month SPI (average R = 0.80 and 0.79,
Table 3 Correlation between Z WBI and meteorological drought indices (values in italic show the
best meteorological drought index with the Z WBI )
Sub-watershed SPI-1 SPI-3 SPI-6 SPI-9 SPI-12 SPI-24 PDSI PHDI WPLM Z-index
Enipeas 0.47 0.86 0.81 0.67 0.58 0.38 0.78 0.73 0.80 0.71
Farsaliotis 0.44 0.84 0.80 0.68 0.57 0.37 0.80 0.73 0.81 0.70
Kalentzis 0.35 0.76 0.85 0.80 0.75 0.60 0.80 0.80 0.85 0.58
Kousbasaniotis 0.21 0.46 0.65 0.73 0.77 0.77 0.78 0.77 0.79 0.47
Litheos 0.52 0.91 0.82 0.70 0.61 0.44 0.76 0.70 0.78 0.73
Mesdani 0.59 0.86 0.70 0.56 0.49 0.38 0.76 0.70 0.81 0.71
Neoxori 0.46 0.86 0.84 0.76 0.69 0.49 0.79 0.75 0.82 0.70
Pamisos 0.49 0.81 0.74 0.62 0.55 0.44 0.76 0.75 0.80 0.63
Pinios 0.45 0.83 0.81 0.68 0.60 0.41 0.77 0.72 0.78 0.68
Pliouris 0.49 0.79 0.92 0.89 0.85 0.64 0.82 0.77 0.81 0.75
Portaikos 0.62 0.82 0.64 0.52 0.46 0.37 0.73 0.69 0.78 0.72
Sofaditis 0.41 0.76 0.73 0.64 0.56 0.39 0.67 0.60 0.67 0.62
Theopetra 0.49 0.87 0.85 0.76 0.69 0.52 0.80 0.76 0.82 0.71
Titarisios 0.46 0.80 0.81 0.74 0.64 0.51 0.77 0.73 0.80 0.67
1096 L. Vasiliades et al.
respectively, for all watersheds) but with large variability (Table 3) followed by
WPLM (average R = 0.79 for all watersheds, and ranging from 0.64 to 0.85) and
PDSI (Table 3) for all of the studied watersheds. Graphical examination of temporal
evolution and scattergraphs confirm that the Z WBI matches better the 3-month SPI
and 6-month SPI for all watersheds except for Kousbasaniotis watershed which
Z WBI corresponds better to larger timescales (12-month SPI and 24-month SPI). A
possible reason could be the small slopes of this watershed and the undulating terrain.
Graphical comparison of water balance derived drought index with Palmer indices
show that WPLM closely matches the Z WBI index. For example, Fig. 2 presents the
Z WBI time series values with the best meteorological drought indices identified from
correlation analysis for Enipeas and Kousbasaniotis subwatersheds. Similar drought
patterns are observed in all other subwatersheds. The monthly patterns follow the
results of the continuous correlation analysis. High correlations (R > 0.8) are found
for autumn and early winter months. The highest correlations were obtained in
December and January. On the contrary, the worst correlations were obtained for
spring and summer months. This noticeable seasonality in the strength of correlations
4.00
3.00
(a)
2.00
Index Value
1.00
0.00
-1.00
-2.00
-3.00
ZWBI SPI 3-month WPLM
-4.00
0
0
-6
-6
-6
-6
-6
-7
-7
-7
-7
-7
-8
-8
-8
-8
-8
-9
-9
-9
-9
-9
-0
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
O
5.00
(b)
4.00
3.00
2.00
Index Value
1.00
0.00
-1.00
-2.00
-3.00
ZWBI SPI 12-month WPLM
-4.00
0
0
-6
-6
-6
-6
-6
-7
-7
-7
-7
-7
-8
-8
-8
-8
-8
-9
-9
-9
-9
-9
-0
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
ct
O
Fig. 2 Time series of best identified meteorological drought indices and water balance derived
drought index for a Enipeas and b Kousbasaniotis subwatersheds
A Water Balance Derived Drought Index for Pinios River Basin, Greece 1097
is, probably, the result of the watershed hydrological behavior. A possible reason
could be the seasonal variability of precipitation and the accumulation of snow and
its consequent melting. The snow accumulation and the snowmelt are not accounted
in the calculation of the meteorological drought indices but they are taken into
consideration in the water balance derived drought index.
Drought episodes have been identified for the examined drought indices in this
study. Table 4 presents the identified drought episodes (drought index value 1)
Table 4 Identified drought episodes for the study drought indices in all Pinios river subwatersheds
Subwatershed Drought Moderately Severely Extremely Total Average drought
index dry episodes dry episodes dry episodes dry episodes duration (months)
Enipeas SPI-3 20 9 3 32 2.4
WPLM 14 1 1 16 4.2
Z WBI 15 8 2 25 2.4
Farsaliotis SPI-3 20 9 1 30 2.7
WPLM 16 1 1 18 4.3
Z WBI 17 5 3 25 2.8
Kalentzis SPI-6 13 7 1 21 3.6
WPLM 10 4 0 14 6.9
Z WBI 6 8 2 16 4.1
Kousbasaniotis SPI-12 9 2 0 11 6.9
WPLM 9 1 0 10 7.6
Z WBI 7 0 1 8 8.1
Litheos SPI-3 17 12 1 30 2.8
WPLM 12 2 1 15 4.7
Z WBI 16 8 1 25 3.0
Mesdani SPI-3 16 12 4 32 2.4
WPLM 15 6 0 21 3.7
Z WBI 21 8 1 30 2.7
Neoxori SPI-3 22 10 3 35 2.3
WPLM 8 3 0 11 7.7
Z WBI 12 5 1 18 4.1
Pamisos SPI-3 21 16 1 38 2.1
WPLM 16 3 0 19 4.1
Z WBI 27 9 0 36 2.4
Pinios SPI-3 22 12 0 34 2.5
WPLM 12 3 0 15 5.8
Z WBI 20 5 1 26 2.9
Pliouris SPI-6 11 6 1 18 4.7
WPLM 7 2 0 9 12.4
Z WBI 12 8 1 21 3.7
Portaikos SPI-3 26 10 3 39 2.1
WPLM 16 4 0 20 3.7
Z WBI 29 7 3 39 1.9
Sofaditis SPI-3 23 11 1 35 2.2
WPLM 8 3 1 12 5.9
Z WBI 15 5 2 22 2.3
Theopetra SPI-3 21 10 2 33 2.5
WPLM 8 1 1 10 9.5
Z WBI 14 6 2 22 3.4
Titarisios SPI-6 12 7 1 20 3.7
WPLM 13 1 1 15 5.0
Z WBI 17 3 2 22 3.4
1098 L. Vasiliades et al.
and their respective drought classes for the period Oct 1960Sep 2002 for the
water balance drought index and the best meteorological drought index identified
by the previous analyses (one timescale for SPI and WPLM for Palmer indices).
Average drought episode duration is also shown. These results show that the water
balance derived drought index is capable to quantify drought episodes and duration
identified by the meteorological drought indices. Overall, frequent moderate and
severe droughts in Pinios river subwatersheds are identified and have small duration.
However, extreme drought episodes are present in all subwatersheds except for
Pamisos watershed and have longer durations. For example, the extreme drought
episode in Enipeas catchment identified by Z WBI in the hydrologic year 19761977
has duration of 9 months (Dec 1976Aug 1977), drought severity of 2.75 and
maximum drought peak of 3.68. The same event has identified as extreme by SPI-
3 and WPLM with 7 (Dec 1976Jun 1977) and 20 (Jan 1977Aug 1978) months
duration, respectively. Similar results are observed in quantifying drought episodes
at the other Pinios river subwatersheds. Drought duration identified by Z WBI is
quite similar to the SPI identified duration whereas the Palmer indices overestimate
drought event duration. Hence, SPI is more capable than WPLM in depicting
hydrological droughts. This conclusion is based on the responsiveness of the SPI
to emerging precipitation deficits at shorter time scales (e.g. 3 months). Thus, the
SPI recognizes moisture deficits more rapidly than the PDSI, which has a response
timescale of approximately 812 months (Heim 2002). The latter is obvious in the
Kousbasaniotis subwatershed. The developed water balance derived drought index
constitutes a versatile tool that can be used in an operational context for drought
monitoring. For a given water resource system, the appropriate correlation between
the hydrological drought index and the time scale of a meteorological drought index
could be selected to evaluate the current situation with respect to historical events.
5 Concluding Remarks
This study evaluated hydrological droughts by using a water balance derived drought
index within an operational context at subwatershed scale. The hydrological drought
severity was evaluated from the standardized outputs of the monthly UTHBAL
conceptual water balance model in major subwatersheds of Pinios river basin
with varying geomorphologic characteristics and high complexity of hydrological
processes with a marked seasonal and interannual variability. Since, in general,
streamflow data are difficult to obtain in real-time, the possibility of using a regional
water balance model to simulate hydrological droughts is quite promising for the
study area. However, caution is needed for application of the UTHBAL model in
ungauged watersheds at different climate regimes without prior calibration. Results
of the initiatives for predictions in ungauged basins (PUB) are aiming to minimize
uncertainty in hydrological practice. In this study, the UTHBAL model parameter
used were calibrated in previous studies at seven (7) gauged of Thessaly region and
for a total of 225 station-years (Loukas et al. 2007; Vasiliades and Loukas 2009).
These calibration results indicated that the runoff simulation errors are minimized
and the NashSutcliffe model efficiency ranged from 0.80 to 0.71 and the percentage
runoff volume error ranged from 1.98% to 0.96%. The simulation of the runoff
in the ungauged study sub-watersheds of Pinios river was achieved using regional
A Water Balance Derived Drought Index for Pinios River Basin, Greece 1099
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