Inclusion of groundwater and socio-economic factors for assessing comprehensive drought vulnerability over Narmada River Basin, India: A geospatial approach

Abstract

AbstractDrought is amongst the most precarious natural hazards associated with severe repercussions. The characterization of droughts is usually carried out by the sector-specific (meteorological/agricultural/hydrological) indices that are mostly based on hydroclimatic variables. Groundwater is the major source of water supply during drought periods, and the socio-economic factors control the aftermaths of droughts; however, they are often ignored by the sector-specific indices, thereby failing to capture the overall impacts of droughts. This study aims to circumvent this issue by incorporating hydroclimatic, socio-economic and physiographic information to assess the overall drought vulnerability over Narmada River Basin, India, which is an agriculture-dominated basin highly dependent on groundwater resources. A Comprehensive Drought Vulnerability Indicator (CDVI) is proposed that assimilates the information on meteorological fluctuations, depth to groundwater level, slope, distance from river reach, population density, land use/land cover, soil type, and elevation through a geospatial approach. The CDVI showed a remarkable geospatial variation over the basin, with a majority (66.4%) of the area under highly to extremely vulnerable conditions. Out of 35 constituent districts of the basin, 9, 22, and 4 districts exhibited moderate, high, and extreme vulnerability to droughts, respectively. These results urge an immediate attention towards reducing drought vulnerability and enhancing resilience towards drought occurrences. The proposed multi-dimensional approach for drought vulnerability mapping would certainly help policy-makers to proactively plan and manage water resources over the basin, especially to ameliorate the pernicious impacts of droughts.