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Socioeconomic vulnerability of pastoralism under spatiotemporal patterns of drought in Eastern Africa

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Abstract

Drought is one of the habitually happening catastrophes threatening millions of pastoralists in Ethiopia. This study was carried out to investigate trends and spatiotemporal patterns of meteorological drought in semiarid areas of southern Ethiopia. Monthly-based gridded rainfall data for 30 years between 1986 and 2016 were obtained from the Ethiopian Meteorological Agency. Nonparametric Mann–Kendall (MK) test along with Sen’s slope estimator was employed to investigate the drought trends. Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI) was used to detect the drought patterns, and the Ordinary Kriging method was employed to interpolate drought severity characteristics. The result indicates that under all timescale, drought events have shown an increasing trend with varying magnitude and intensity. The drought magnitudes for the small rainy months range from − 11.15 in November to − 11.76 in September, while it ranges from − 10.08 in April to − 11.38 in March (major rainy) month. The seasonal rainfall tends to show a plodding decline across the watershed which is the manifestation of spatially varying drought severity, frequency, and intensity in the watershed. Both annual and seasonal distributions of drought were varying spatiotemporally. A drought of varying magnitude, intensity, and severity identified across the watershed resulted due to spatiotemporally varying rainfall. Moderate and severe drought incidents occur more frequently as compared to the other drought category. Variability in the intensity and frequency of drought events has significantly impacted pastoralists’ livelihoods. Therefore, strengthening the coping capacity of pastoralists requires an immediate paradigm shift from reactive types of intervention to proactive measures.

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Data availability

The data used or analyzed during the study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable requests.

Notes

  1. is years of Ethiopian great famine from 1988–1892 which locally known as ‘evil days’.

  2. Ganna is local name given to the time of relatively long rainy season.

  3. Hagayya is local name to short rainy season.

Abbreviations

MoA:

Ministry of Agriculture

EEA:

Ethiopian Environmental Authority

ENSO:

El Niño–Southern Oscillation

RDI:

Reconnaissance Drought Index

ASAL:

Arid and semiarid lands

IFRCRCS:

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

ENMA:

Ethiopian National Meteorological Agency

PET:

Potential evapotranspiration

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Acknowledgements

The research was partially funded by Bule Hora University for the first author in his PhD work. The Ethiopian National Meteorological Agency provided the required data. Therefore, we would like to thank both organizations. Finally, MGH wants to thank Mr. Getnet Engidaw for his extroverted technical supports.

Funding

This research was partially funded by Bule Hora University under the PhD research scholarship program for doctoral studies for the first author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Bule Hora University, P.O.Box 144, Oromia, Ethiopia

    Guye Mekuria

  2. Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Dilla University, Dilla, Ethiopia

    Abiyot Legesse & Yimer Mohammed

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  1. Guye Mekuria
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  2. Abiyot Legesse
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  3. Yimer Mohammed
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Contributions

The first author (MGH) collected the data, analyzed it, and made the final write-up which is part of his doctoral thesis in Disaster Risk Management at Arba Minch University, Ethiopia. The second (AL) and third (YM) authors commented and edited the final manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Guye Mekuria.

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Responsible Editor: Zhihua Zhang

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Mekuria, G., Legesse, A. & Mohammed, Y. Socioeconomic vulnerability of pastoralism under spatiotemporal patterns of drought in Eastern Africa. Arab J Geosci 14, 2654 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-021-08967-3

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