Abstract
In the last decade, Syria has witnessed a dramatic change in rainfall patterns. These changes have badly affected vegetation cover and agricultural production. Thus, the aim of this research is to track agricultural drought changes over Syria and to highlight the most vulnerable zones to them. To achieve the study aim, monthly precipitation data observed at 36 metrological stations uniformly distributed over Syria were collected. After that, dataset was checked for homogeneity. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) was then applied to detect agricultural drought. In the final steps, the results were driven to GIS and interpolated using the ‘Kriging’ method. The results showed that rainfall had decreased across Syria from 1990 to 2010. However, the years between 2006 and 2010 were the worst of the studied periods. Similarly, the Mann–Kendall test showed a negative trend for agricultural drought in almost all of the studied stations. All in all, this research emphasizes the negative trends of rainfall in Syria and the positive trend of agricultural drought.
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Mohammed, S., Alsafadi, K., Mousavi, S.M.N., Harsányi, E. (2021). Rainfall Change and Spatial-Temporal Aspects of Agricultural Drought in Syria. In: Al-Maktoumi, A., et al. Water Resources in Arid Lands: Management and Sustainability. Advances in Science, Technology & Innovation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67028-3_18
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