Drought Analysis of
Jackee Lyman
GIS in Water Resources
Introduction
Drought is a natural recurrent
feature of our constantly changing climate.
It affects climate zones in various ways depending upon region, need and
disciplinary perspectives. Drought is defined as the “deficiency of
precipitation over an extended period of time, usually a season or more”. (10)
This deficiency usually results in water shortages for activities, groups or
environmental sectors. Drought is dependent on timing, and the effectiveness of
precipitation. Other factors that might
aggravate its severity are high temperature, high wind, and low relative
humidity. (10) Environmental factors are not the only causes of drought. The demands of local societies in the region
can also heavily impact the water levels. (10)
Drought can cause many alterations in regions lacking
precipitation. Living in Utah we
experience drought on a cyclic basis, there have been major droughts between 1896-1905, 1930-36, 1953-65, 1974-78, and
more recently during 1988-93 and 1999-2002.(11). Some things affected by drought include
stream flow, surface water levels, underground water levels and the vegetation
of the region. These are all things that
human beings depend on for many differing reasons. Humans depend on water levels and vegetation
to supply the world with resources, water is also used for recreation
purposes.
Currently, Utah is in it’s third year of
serious drought. According to
NOAA, Utah would need to receive an average of 2 inches of rain to end this
drought. Drought can be measured in one
of two ways. Most people look at the
amount, type of precipitation and how it feels and then assess the drought.
Based on those observations a more accurate way is the Palmer Drought Severity
Index, this is a national standard for measuring drought. A drought index of 4
represents extremely wet conditions where as -4 represents extremely dry
conditions. According to the figure below, Utah is currently at a -3.9. This means that Utah is in a sever state of
drought.
Figure
1. Palmer Drought Severity Index for
Source:
USGS (2003)
Objective
The objective of this project was to create a user friendly map indicating
specific data useful for different things. Some include analysis and comparison of
drought for future generations, current and future visitors and residents of
Creating the Map
This map is designed for use by the general public to assess and compare current drought conditions. This map contains many layers including layers on streams, springs, lakes, ground water, wetlands, vegetation, contour lines, privately owned lands, government Lands, city boundaries, and city blocks. As seen in the following figure there are many different features and data that can be accessed from this map.
Figure 2. Map of Utah County.
The data used to create this map was collected from
Figure 3,
Figure 5,
After compiling these shapefiles into one map, the next step
was to create a new layer named “points” where I could add a point to each city
and a few more. I then used these points
to add hyperlinks to my map. The
hyperlinks are used to help the user find websites and documents that are
related to drought. These websites and
documents contain maps and data that give flow patterns, precipitation values,
and temperatures. There are five
categories of different links; 1. The
Creating a
Hyperlink
Creating hyperlinks in ArcMap is not a difficult task to perform. The first step is to use the identify tool to click on a point. The identify results box will pop-up as you see if Figure 7.
Figure 7. Identify Results Pop-up Box.
Figure
8. Add Hyperlink Prompt Figure 9.
Document or URL prompt
The next step is to right click on the chosen feature. A dialog box will appear giving several items to choose from. To create a hyperlink, choose “Add Hyperlink”. (See Figure 8). When this is chosen a box will pop up you can decide to add a document or a URL address. (See Figure 9)
You have now created a Hyperlink in your map.
Hyperlinks in the
Map
Utah County Website
In this map I created a hyperlink to the Utah County
Website. This website is useful because
it gives information on the climate in
Figure 10. Utah County Website
Drought Information
Hyperlinks to drought information are useful for many things especially for comparing future years to 2003 and most recent years. In Figure 11 you can see the US Drought Monitor showing the indices for drought. It shows the severity of the drought in different states.
Figure 11. NOAA
(2003)
Figure
12 shows the seasonal drought outlook.
You can see for eastern
Figure 12. NOAA (2003)
Figure
13 shows the Palmer Drought Indices for the
Figure 13. NOAA (2003)
Figure
14 shows the long term drought indicator.
This shows the impacts that are made due to a lack of precipitation over
the course of several months to a couple of years. These things include reservoir content,
ground water depths, and lake levels.
These impacts are based on things such as the drought index, and
precipitation.
Figure 14. NOAA (2003)
Figure
15 is the National Weather Service Website.
You can receive up to date information on the weather at this site. If you are not interested in the drought
conditions you can see the weather conditions, temperatures, and precipitation
values.
Figure 15. The National
Weather Service Website.
Figure
16 is a graph of temperatures recorded in
Figure 16. Graph of January
Temperature in
Source: NOAA (2003) Source:
NOAA (2003)
As indicated in the above graphs a correlation exists between the two. From examining the two we see that in years with high temperature there seems to be above to normal precipitation. If we look closely in 2003 there is below average precipitation and extremely high temperatures, these are characteristics of a drought.
Water Wise
Landscaping
Figure 18. Water-Wise Plants
for
The above figures are websites that list different types of plants, grass, shrubbery, and trees used in landscaping. You can go to the USU Extension Search website and search for water wise landscaping and come up with about 5 different documents that deal with landscaping in drought areas. These types of plants and landscaping require less water to grow resulting in water preservation. This will lessen the impact that humans have on the environment due to the drought conditions.
Conservation of Water
Figures 20, 21, and 22 are all from the Division of Water Resources website. These websites contain ideas for conserving water.
Some ways that
water is used in our lives include
modern conveniences. They have made it more of a relaxed life style, but
they tend to use more water. Water that
enters the house may go to several different places. Here is a breakdown of
where the water generally goes. 58% goes to bathrooms, 22% to laundry, 14% to
leaks in plumbing and the last Figure 21. Indoor Water
Use
11%
to the kitchen. Almost two thirds of the water used in a home is outdoors. It takes two feet of water in order to keep
our lawns green.
Figure 20. Division of Water Resources Website
Figure 22. Outdoor Water Use
City Websites
The
final hyperlinks that we added to this map were links to city websites. These are helpful because accessing them will
give you information on the local climate, and give you general information
about the particular city.
Figure 23. Map of Cities in
Maps
Figure 25. Map of Waterbodies
in
Figure 27. Map of Elevation in
The above maps represent the different types of maps that
can be seen in my project. Figure 25 is
a map of the water resources; you can see where
Figure 26 is a map of the vegetation in
Figure 27 is a map of the elevation contour lines. It helps to give a feel of what the county looks like geographically. Knowing where mountains and valleys are is beneficial because it will give an idea to where more precipitation and snow accumulation will occur.
Figure 28 is a map of the boundaries between private lands and those owned by the government. This gives an idea of where the private lands are located and also gives you an idea who suffers the most because of drought. You can see that the mountainous areas are owned by the government and the valleys are occupied by people. The farmers are going to suffer more due to the fact that it rains more in the mountains than it does in the valleys. These and other maps can be accessed in my project.
Conclusion
Drought affects us all whether we are aware of it or not. It has large impacts on the crops we use and
the health of our animals. It has swat
on how much water can be used by the public in the simplest things. Things like watering lawns and taking
showers. Because of this we all should
take an interest in drought and its effects.
Learning how and why it works will help us know how to lessen its
effects and possible predict or prevent it in the future. I created this map with that goal in
mind. I hope the information created
will help us understand drought a little better and be beneficial to future
generations. Giving a comparison to the
future data that others will collect. It
also helps to inform those looking at
References
- Utah
AGRC (2003) Found on
- NOAA
(2003)
- NOAA
(2003) US Drought Monitor. Found on
- NOAA
(2003) Drought Termination and Amelioration. Found on
- NOAA
(2003)
- NOAA
(2003) Average Annual Precipitation
- NOAA
(2003) US Seasonal Drought Outlook. Found on
- NOAA
(2003) National Weather Service.
Found on
- USGS
(2003) Drought Conditions in
- NOAA
(2003) WEEKLY PALMER DROUGHT AND CROP MOISTURE DATA FOR THE CLIMATE
DIVISIONS IN THE WESTERN REGION. Found on