Assessment of Drought Vulnerability Using Meteorological Drought Index in Shimsha Basin

A major obstacle to sustainable development is drought. India is an agricultural predominant country and a majority of the agricultural land is rainfed. After Rajasthan, Karnataka has the second largest geographical area which is prone to meteorological drought. For sustainable development, drought assessment is the first step in developing drought mitigation measures. Drought indices are used to assess drought, and research has shown that while certain dryness indices are better than others at describing drought, all drought indices are locally evolved. In this research, the Shimsha Basin is assessed for drought vulnerability using a meteorological drought index called percentage departure (PD). As the study area has a larger portion of agricultural land, it is very crucial to understand the drought characteristics to plan the agricultural activities. For this analysis, monthly rainfall data for 30 years from nine stations of IMD gridded data is used from 1989–2018. The study revealed that the study area is receiving decent amounts of rainfall across all the stations. The results reflect no drought condition in most of the years across all stations followed by mild drought, moderate, and severe drought conditions.