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Influence of human activities on meteorological drought and its trends in Iran

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Abstract

Meteorological drought is one of the different types of drought that occurs all over the world with each climatic condition and has negative effects on various sectors such as available water resources, natural ecosystems, and rainfed agriculture. On the other hand, in recent decades, incompatible human activities with the principles of sustainable development have led to changes in drought regimes worldwide; therefore, in this research, it has been tried to assess the influence of human activities on meteorological drought and its trends in Iran. In this study, the meteorological data series of 24 Iranian stations from 1967 to 2017 were selected. First, the occurrence frequency of drought severity was calculated using the reconnaissance drought index (RDI) in constant and progressively increasing periods, i.e., 11 time periods including periods from 1967 to 1997, 1969 to 1999, …, 1987 to 2017 during 31 years for all stations over seasonal time scales (i.e., winter, spring, summer, and autumn) and annual time scales. Then the Sen’s slope estimator test was used to evaluate the trend of drought severity changes from 1967 to 2017 and the changes in the pattern of the trend of changes in drought. The results indicated that at 79.17% of stations (i.e., 19 out of 24 stations) in annual times scale and at 87.50%, 66.66%, and 29.16% of stations in the winter, autumn, and summer time scales (respectively), the intensity of decreasing trend in RDI in newer time periods such as T11, T10, and T9 was more than the decreasing trend in RDI in older time periods such as T1, T2, and T3; however, in spring time scale at 41.66% (i.e., 10 out of 24 stations), the intensity of decreasing trend in RDI in newer time periods was more than the decreasing trend in RDI in older time periods. It can be concluded that influenced by human activities and interventions, the intensity of decreasing trend in RDI at newer time periods was more than the older time periods.

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Data availability

The data used in this research are available with the corresponding author and can be shared upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Iran Meteorological Organization for help to provide the required data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Range and Watershed Management (Nature Engineering), Faculty of Agriculture, Fasa University, Fasa, Iran

    Abdol Rassoul Zarei

  2. Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science, Fasa University, Fasa, Iran

    Mohammad Reza Mahmoudi

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  1. Abdol Rassoul Zarei
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  2. Mohammad Reza Mahmoudi
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Abdol Rassoul Zarei contributed in the data collection, analyzing the results, and writing the article, and Mohammad Reza Mahmoudi contributed in analyzing the results.

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Correspondence to Abdol Rassoul Zarei.

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Responsible Editor: Zhihua Zhang

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Zarei, A.R., Mahmoudi, M.R. Influence of human activities on meteorological drought and its trends in Iran. Arab J Geosci 14, 889 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-021-07287-w

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