The Palmer drought severity index (PDSI) has been developed for the Great Plains of USA, considering the environmental conditions and the crops in the area. After testing the applicability of the PDSI for Southern Portugal, a modification of the water balance was attempted assuming dryland olives as the drought-reference crop and using the FAO methodology to compute the crop evapotranspiration. All basic procedures of the Palmer method were kept, mainly those relative to the anomaly index and the PDSI. Results show that the modified PDSI behaves coherently with the original PDSI but its behaviour responds better to the observed drought conditions, characterized with the SPI. Particularly, its response to different soil water holding capacities is more coherent than the one of the original PDSI
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Pereira, L.S., Rosa, R.D., Paulo, A.A. (2007). Testing a Modification of the Palmer Drought Severity Index for Mediterranean Environments. In: Rossi, G., Vega, T., Bonaccorso, B. (eds) Methods and Tools for Drought Analysis and Management. Water Science and Technology Library, vol 62. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5924-7_8
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