Table of Contents
1. Introduction.........................................................................................................................................2
2. Study area............................................................................................................................................2
3. Data sources........................................................................................................................................4
4. Methods..............................................................................................................................................4
5. Results.................................................................................................................................................6
6. Analysis..............................................................................................................................................12
7. Discussion and Conclusion.................................................................................................................13
1. Introduction
Droughts are among the most devastating natural hazards in the human ecosystem, causing major
societal disruptions, depletion of water resources and dramatic reduction in crop yields. Drought
conditions can be characterized based on meteorological variables such as precipitation-
Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Global Precipitation Mission (GPM), precipitation
and potential evapotranspiration- Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), the
degree of vegetation greenness such analyzing the probability of Normalized Difference
Vegetation Index and soil moisture content- Soil Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) among
others.
Drought can be viewed from different perspectives. Meteorological drought is the first indicator
of drought occurrence, duration and severity, and is based only on precipitation and air
temperature. Its prolonged duration can cause hydrological drought which affects water
resources, the environment and the economy. Hydrological drought in turn gives rise to
agricultural drought which results in adverse plant responses that can range from reduced crop
yields to total crop failures.
The main objective of this study is to discuss the reliability of different meteorological and
hydrological drought indices in drought assessment over the Tana River Basin. The following
drought indices will be discussed in detail:
Soil Moisture Active and Passive
Standardized Precipitation evapotranspiration Index
Global Precipitation Mission
2. Study area
Tana River basin is the largest wetland basin in Kenya and cuts across 14 counties. Its main
catchment areas are the Aberdares ranges and Mt Kenya. The basin is a key driver of the local
and National Ecosystem. It has a spatial extent of approximately 120000km² area and is home to
approximately 7.2 million people. Population growth rate in the drier parts is higher than the
other parts at 5%. The basin borders Somalia and the Indian Ocean coastline in the East, the Athi
River Basin to the south, the Ewaso Ngiro north Basin to the North and the Rift Valley Basin to
the west. Major towns in the basin include Garissa, Thika, Lamu, Nyeri, Murang’a, Embu and
Kitui.
The Tana River is the main river in this basin and drains approximately 76% of the Tana River
Basin. It originates on the Slopes of Mt. Kenya and flows eastwards until it reaches Garissa town,
after which it flows southwards and pours into the Indian Ocean at the Tana Delta in Kipini.
Upstream tributaries include Chania, Thiba, Maragua and Thika rivers. Seasonal tributaries join
the mainstream downstream of Garissa and include, Mihunguthu, Maua, Komoli, Galole and
Kokani rivers. The total length of the river is approximately 1102km. The upper catchment of the
river in central Kenya covers an area of 7650km² which is approximately 6% of the total area but
contributes more than 70% of the river run-off. Several flagship projects identified in Kenya’s
Vision 2030 and in the National Water Master Plan 2030 are dependent on water transfers from
the basin. The upper and middle Tana sub-watersheds have five hydro-electric power dams and
two more planned for construction while the lower regions of the basin have large irrigation
schemes namely Hola, Tana Delta and Bura Schemes.
3. Data sources
The following data sources were employed in this paper;
a. Famine Early Warnings Systems Network Land Data Assimilation System (FLDAS)
b. Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD)
c. Water Resources Management Authority (WARMA)
d. NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS)
4. Methods
I. Soil Moisture Active and Passive
SMAP measures how much water is in the top layer (5cm) of soil everywhere on the earth’s
surface not covered in water or frozen. All soils emit microwave radiation but the amount water
present changes how much of this energy is emitted. The drier the soil the more microwave
energy. SMAP measures radiation in the L-band microwave wavelength (30cm-15cm) at 1.2Ghz
frequency. This wavelength of energy penetrates clouds so SMAP can measure soil moisture
regardless the cloud condition. The data can be obtained from NASA’s Earth Observing System
Data and Information System (EOSDIS)
In this study, we are going to investigate both surface and subsurface soil moisture independently
since April 2015 to September 2022 since this is the only time period in which the SMAP mission
took place before being suspended.
II. Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index
This index is an improved version of SPI since it carries out measurements of both precipitation
and air temperature. The following steps are used in both SPI and SPEI;
Step 1:
(eq1)
K – time scale I is the year m is month of year P is precipitation.
The two-parameter Gamma distribution is used to fit the time series as shown in the equation
below.
(eq2)
Where: α is shape parameter, β is scale parameter.
Step 2:
Estimation of the cumulative probability
(eq3)
Where p is probability of no precipitation.
Step 3:
Transformation of the cumulative probability to the standard normal variable
(eq4)
Where
And
Value Z is representative for SPI.
Two distinct features of SPEI compared with SPI are:
(i) The calculation framework is similar to SPI, but it uses a deficit between precipitation and
potential evapotranspiration as the time series of SPEI;
(ii) Three-parameter Log-logistic regression was employed to fit the time series of SPEI through
the following equation.
(eq5)
Where α, β, and γ are shape, scale, and original parameter, respectively.
III. Global Precipitation Measurement Mission
GPM mission is a network of satellites that provide global observation of both rainfall
and snow from space every three hours. These measurements help in advancing our
understand in water and energy cycles, which aid in improving forecasting of extreme
events that cause natural hazards and disasters. It provides near–real time observation for
a host of societal applications that include the identification of storm locations, flood
forecasting, freshwater monitoring, landslide warning, crop prediction, and tracking of
waterborne diseases. When combined with Active and Passive Remote sensing
techniques it provides calibration standards for Unifying and improving global
precipitation measurements. This study will cover GPM missions as from 2015 to 2021.
2022 and 2023 data are not available
IV. Time-series Modelling
Time series modelling aims at building an explanatory model of data by providing the
simplest model in a large set of data over large period of time. Building a time series
model to understand the dynamic changes in climatic anomalies such as temperature and
precipitation can provide useful information about drought and other natural hazards
occurrence in the future. In this paper we did a combined SMAP and GPM time series to
help in visualizing the trend in both soil moisture content and precipitation and the
correlation between the two datasets between the years 2015 and 2022.
V. Modified Mann-Kendal Trend Test Analysis
Mann Kendall test was performed to analyze the trends of the drought indices. MK is a
non-parametric test that statistically asses the monotonic trends in data over time. To
provide a robust assessment in the presence of autocorrelation time series, which may
cause a false interpretation results to the trend, the serial correlation effect was removed
based on the prewhitening method. The MK test was then carried out.
5. Results
This section characterizes meteorological (precipitation and evapotranspiration) and land surface
parameters (Soil moisture content) for Tana River Basin. Google Earth Engine was employed in
the visualization of these anomalies. A shapefile of Tana River Basin was created and imported to
Google Earth Engine and clipped as our area of interest. In order to import a shapefile into GEE
one must first transform its coordinate system into EPSG:4326, also known as the WGS84
projection.
a. Meteorological parameters
The annual average precipitation and evapotranspiration were calculated to study the
patterns from 2015 to 2021.
i. Precipitation
The following images show average annual precipitation information obtained
from Global Precipitation Measurements (GPM) mission
Fig 1. a Fig 1.b
Fig 1.c Fig 1.d
Fig 1. e Fig 1.f
Fig 1.g
ii. Evapotranspiration
SPEI drought monitoring index was employed in order to analyze the precipitation and
the annual rate of evapotranspiration anomalies in the Tana River Basin over the period
of six years. The following map snippets show the SPEI results from 2015 to 2021.
Fig 2. a Fig 2.b
Fig 2.c Fig 2.d
Fig 2. e Fig 2.f
Fig 2.g
b. Land-surface Parameters (Soil moisture content)
The SMAP mission was applied to help in the assessment of both surface and sub-surface
soil moisture content over the basin between 2015 and 2022 time period and the are
shown by the maps below.
i. Surface Soil Moisture Content
Fig 3. a Fig 3.b
Fig 3.c Fig 3.d
Fig 3. e Fig 3.f
Fig 3. g Fig 3.h
ii. Sub-surface Soil Moisture
Fig 4. a Fig 4.b
Fig 4.c Fig 4.d
Fig 4. e Fig 4.f
Fig 4. g Fig 4.h
c. Time-Series Modelling
A chart was modelled to show the correlation between average annual precipitation and
soil moisture content for the basin between 2015 and 2022as shown below.
6. Analysis
From the above maps extracted from Google Earth Engine, it is clear that precipitation was
highest in the year 2020 with values ranging between 1.0 to slightly above 5.0mm with most
parts having precipitation amounts higher than 3.0mm. As a result, both the surface and
subsurface soil moisture contents were higher compared to the other years with values ranging
between -0.2 to 1.9 cm³/cm³ and -0.1 to 1.9 cm³/cm³ respectively. However, the rate of
evapotranspiration was lower with most parts of the basin having evapotranspiration rates
ranging between 1.8 to 2.4mm. The coastal parts of the basin had the highest rates of
evapotranspiration during the year.
Also, the year 2016 had high amounts of precipitation ranging between -0.5 to 2.2 mm. The
lower Tana region received less than 1.0 mm average annual rainfall while still having slightly
higher rates of evapotranspiration compared to upper Tana region. Also, the Surface and
subsurface soil moisture contents were higher compared to other regions but not higher than in
2020 with values ranging between -1.1 to 1.7mm and -1.2 to 1.6mm respectively.
In the year 2019 and 2018, most parts of the basin received low amounts of rainfall with
amounts lower than 0.0mm. 2019 had higher soil moisture content than 2018 with values
ranging between -08 to 0.9mm. Higher amounts of evapotranspiration were observed in the
lower Tana than in the upper Tana in 2019. In 2018, it was observed that the rate of
evapotranspiration was higher in the coastal parts of Lower Tana than the other parts of the
Basin.
2017 received low amounts of rainfall with most parts receiving between -0.8 to 0.0 mm. The
Eastern part of the basin had higher rates of evapotranspiration compared to the western part.
Lower Tana was observed to have higher soil moisture content compared to upper Tana.
In 2021 lower Tana received higher amounts of precipitation with most areas ranging between -
1.3 to above 0.1 mm compared to upper Tana where most areas received below -1.3mm. Most
regions received high amounts of evapotranspiration during this year. 2022 and 2015 will not be
analyzed in this study because of inadequate information from the GPM and SMAP missions
which might lead to misinformation.
7. Discussion and Conclusion
Assessment of meteorological drought based on the above discussed parameters will provide
insightful information about the hydrological drought in an area, for instance the volume of
water in dams, rivers, lakes and wells among others. This information can be useful in analyzing
agricultural drought in the area. For instance, 2020 had higher amounts of precipitation which
means the water volume in rivers and dams was higher compared to the other years implying
that crop production was high during this year except for Taita Taveta and Makueni where the
rains ended early, and Nyeri where the rains were excessive. The high rainfalls also resulted in
increased prices of crop produce in the ready markets such as Nairobi. The price of Maize had an
8-22% increase compared to the previous years, while that of beans increased by 14-38%. This
increase in the food prices was due to the increased demand. However, the heavy rainfalls in
upper Tana in April resulted to flooding in Tana River county and Garissa where the river Burst
its banks resulting to the displacement of around 7000 people. These floods also resulted to
destruction of crops, soil erosion and death of livestock. The above average March-May rainfalls
in 2018 resulted good to fair pasture and browse conditions in the pastoralist communities in
the Basin. This in turn resulted to good livestock conditions hence increasing their productivity
and market prices. Also, the trekking distance to water sources reduced to two to six Kilometers
compared to the usual five to 15 kms. Shortage of the March – May long rains in 2019 resulted
decline in livestock production in pastoral communities and decline in crop production in the
marginal communities of the Lower Tana Basin. This in turn resulted to an increase in maize
prices from the second quarter of the year due to shortage. Agricultural production was above
average in the Upper Tana Region since there were some rains between May and July.
In conclusion, Meteorological drought assessment can provide insightful information about
agricultural production directly through the analysis of relevant anomalies.