Abstract
In this study, to evaluate the trend of precipitation change, the Mann–Kendall method has been used. The studied area is Lorestan province located in the western part of Iran. To achieve this goal, time series of annual and monthly rainfall data were collected for different statistical periods. Moreover, in order to analyze the drought, the standard precipitation index and the non-parametric Mann–Kendall test were used. To predict the meteorological drought in this province, the monthly time series of the precipitation parameter was incorporated. The results showed that most parts of Lorestan province are facing an extreme drought and such conditions will happen again in the future. Furthermore, the amount of precipitation was predicted until 2032, and the trend of predicted precipitation data in the entire Lorestan province showed that there is a significant trend in most months. The results of the research on an annual scale showed that all stations have a significant negative trend at the level of 5%, which indicates the existence of a negative trend, or in other words, a decrease in irrigation in the studied stations. Therefore, according to the obtained results, it is necessary to plan water consumption in Lorestan province toward sustainable management.
HIGHLIGHTS
The modified Mann–Kendall method has been implemented to evaluate the trend of precipitation change in Lorestan province, Iran.
Agricultural lands of the study area are facing an extreme drought in the future.
The available water is estimated for the next two decades to decrease the effects of drought on water supplements.
INTRODUCTION
For the long-term planning of water resources, it will be necessary to study the climate in the future to determine the number of water resources and consumption for evaluating the solutions to the water crisis in a sustainable management system (Sherly et al. 2015; Alamanos et al. 2018; Hou et al. 2021).
Precipitation is one of the most important components in the definition of drought. Drought as a climatic phenomenon cannot be defined only by the lack of rainfall in a region (Schlesinger & Ramankutty 1994; Azaranfar et al. 2006). This phenomenon occurs in almost all climatic regions of the world, but its characteristics are different from one region to another. Climatic drought occurs when the annual rainfall is less than its long-term average. If a climatic drought continues, it will lead to the occurrence of hydrological drought (Lalehzari & Kerachian 2020, 2021). A yield degradation phenomenon occurs when the available soil moisture for the crop water requirement decreases below the level of the permanent wilting point (Zhang et al. 2019). This disaster occurs after the continuation of climatic, hydrological and agricultural drought (Li & Zhang 2008; Huo et al. 2019; G. Wang et al. 2022a, 2022b).
In recent years, due to the importance of the topic in the field of evaluating the effects of climate change on water resources management, several studies have been conducted in Iran. Studied areas in Iran were the East Azarbayjan province (Ashofteh & Masahbavani 2007), Urmia Lake (Fakheri et al. 2011), Gorganrud watershed (Azari et al. 2013), Tuyserkan Basin, Hamedan (Poormohammadi et al. 2017) and Zayandehrud River (Sabbaghi et al. 2020). Karamouz et al. (2018) have used the output of atmospheric circulation models to evaluate the effect of climate change on groundwater resources in Rafsanjan plain and have done microscaling of climate variables by the LARS-WG model. Jamshidzadeh & Mirbagheri (2017) in the evaluation of the quantity and quality of groundwater in Kashan based on the data of 53 wells observed that the average water level has decreased by 7.93 m during the years 1990–2006 and the average decrease in the water level per year is 0.496 m. Azizi et al. (2017), by investigating the effects of climate change on the water resources of the Karaj River catchment using the Mann–Kendall method and predicting meteorological data, found that despite the decrease in precipitation in the coming decades, the river discharge will increase, which indicates an increasing temperature and loss of water resources in the mountains. H. Y. Wang et al. (2022) used land use and climate change information to investigate the relationship between drought and water resources. The results showed that droughts in groundwater occur 2–3 months later than climatic droughts.
Furthermore, reference can be made to the studies of Elsner et al. (2009) in the United States, Daba et al. (2013) and Fentaw et al. (2018) in the Nile River Basin in Ethiopia, de Pinto et al. (2012) in Ghana, Nkomozepi & Chung (2014) in South Korea, Maier & Dietrich (2016) in Germany, Shrestha et al. (2017) in the Athabasca River Basin Canada, Tan et al. (2017) in the Kelantan in northeastern Malaysia, Brouziyne et al. (2018) in the Mediterranean watershed in northwestern Morocco, and Guevara-Ochera et al. (2020) in a watershed in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Gebremeskel & Kebede (2018) investigated the impact of climate change on the water resources of the Werii River basin located in northern Ethiopia by using general climate and hydrological models. This research presented the impact of climate change on water resources using SDSM (Statistical DownScaling Model) and WetSpa (Water and Energy Transfer between Soil, Plants and Atmosphere) models. A fully distributed model (WetSpa) was used to simulate baseline water resources (2010–2014) and future periods (2015–2050). Digital elevation models (DEMs), land use, soil, water and meteorological characteristics were used as inputs to the WetSpa model.
Jahangir et al. (2019) used a Mann–Kendall test method and an artificial neural network to estimate evaporation from the lake surface of Amirkabir Dam. This research was planned with 18-year statistics for neural network training and the best structure was chosen to calculate the evaporation rate. The developed structure had four neurons in the first layer and five neurons in the second layer. Zhu et al. (2022) evaluated the changes in precipitation data using the hydrological rank method and by examining the trend of station changes. Examining the trend of minimum and maximum precipitation changes was more heterogeneous than for semi-humid regions.
According to the many studies that have been carried out for identifying the effect of climate change (H. Wang et al. 2022), and since the powerful non-parametric Mann–Kendall test has a high ability to determine the presence or absence of the trend and sudden changes in the time series, it is necessary to discuss and examine the results of this test in climatic series. Lorestan province is the second rainiest basin in Iran after the Caspian Sea watershed. This province has very good capacities in the water resources sector, but the lack of proper management and planning in controlling water resources contributes to the occurrence of drought. Therefore, in this research, the impact of climate change has been evaluated by calculating the trend of precipitation changes using the Mann–Kendall method and evaluating annual and monthly precipitation in different stations of Lorestan province.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Study area
Station . | Longitude . | Latitude . | Height above sea level (m) . |
---|---|---|---|
Aleshtar | 48° 15′ | 33° 49′ | 1,567 |
Aligodarz | 49° 42′ | 33° 24′ | 2,022 |
Azna | 49° 25′ | 33° 27′ | 1,872 |
Boroujerd | 48° 45′ | 33° 55′ | 1,629 |
Durood | 49° 00′ | 33° 31′ | 1,522 |
Khoramabad | 48° 17′ | 33° 26′ | 1,155 |
Kohdasht | 47° 39′ | 33° 31′ | 1,198 |
Noorabad | 48° 00′ | 34° 03′ | 1,859 |
Poledokhtar | 47° 43′ | 33° 09′ | 714 |
Station . | Longitude . | Latitude . | Height above sea level (m) . |
---|---|---|---|
Aleshtar | 48° 15′ | 33° 49′ | 1,567 |
Aligodarz | 49° 42′ | 33° 24′ | 2,022 |
Azna | 49° 25′ | 33° 27′ | 1,872 |
Boroujerd | 48° 45′ | 33° 55′ | 1,629 |
Durood | 49° 00′ | 33° 31′ | 1,522 |
Khoramabad | 48° 17′ | 33° 26′ | 1,155 |
Kohdasht | 47° 39′ | 33° 31′ | 1,198 |
Noorabad | 48° 00′ | 34° 03′ | 1,859 |
Poledokhtar | 47° 43′ | 33° 09′ | 714 |
One of the climatic characteristics of Lorestan is the climate diversity that three distinct climate zones can be recognized in it:
1. Cold mountainous area, including regions that are more than 1,400 m above sea level. The regions of Boroujerd, Durood, Azna, Aligodarz, Aleshtar and Noorabad are located in this climate zone.
2. The moderate temperate zone includes the stations that are relatively low above sea level. Khoramabad and Kohdasht stations have this type of climate.
3. The warm area includes regions with a very low altitude above sea level. High temperature and low amounts of rainfall are the specialties of this area. Poledokhtar station is located in this area.
. | Study period year . | Annual precipitation (mm) . | Allocated water MCM . | Correlation% . | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Station . | Max . | Average . | Min . | |||
Aleshtar | 21 | 619 | 448 | 254 | 50 | 76 |
Aligodarz | 32 | 631 | 384 | 205 | 138 | 69 |
Azna | 18 | 569 | 400 | 252 | 184 | 82 |
Boroujerd | 29 | 728 | 461 | 279 | 156 | 58 |
Durood | 19 | 884 | 613 | 372 | 149 | 75 |
Khoramabad | 66 | 814 | 495 | 220 | 130 | 86 |
Kohdasht | 21 | 485 | 377 | 220 | 113 | 91 |
Noorabad | 18 | 614 | 460 | 294 | 248 | 72 |
Poledokhtar | 19 | 493 | 368 | 185 | 119 | 66 |
. | Study period year . | Annual precipitation (mm) . | Allocated water MCM . | Correlation% . | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Station . | Max . | Average . | Min . | |||
Aleshtar | 21 | 619 | 448 | 254 | 50 | 76 |
Aligodarz | 32 | 631 | 384 | 205 | 138 | 69 |
Azna | 18 | 569 | 400 | 252 | 184 | 82 |
Boroujerd | 29 | 728 | 461 | 279 | 156 | 58 |
Durood | 19 | 884 | 613 | 372 | 149 | 75 |
Khoramabad | 66 | 814 | 495 | 220 | 130 | 86 |
Kohdasht | 21 | 485 | 377 | 220 | 113 | 91 |
Noorabad | 18 | 614 | 460 | 294 | 248 | 72 |
Poledokhtar | 19 | 493 | 368 | 185 | 119 | 66 |
Simulation of climatic parameters
The LARS-WG is one of the random meteorological data generation models that is used to provide daily rainfall data (Li et al. 2022), maximum radiation and minimum temperature of a station under current and future climate conditions. In this model, the output of general circulation models is microscaled by statistical methods in such a way that it is very close to the real value. This model includes three main parts: calibration, verification and creating meteorological data for the future period. In the model calibration section, after collecting precipitation data and the average temperature of the nine mentioned stations for the base period (1991–2021) and preparing the input files, the model was run for the base period.
In 1993, the Colorado Climate Center and the US National Drought Mitigation Center used the SPI to define and monitor drought conditions. The variability of the SPI allows it to be used on short-term scales for agricultural purposes and on long-term scales for hydrological purposes such as groundwater resources, river flows, lake levels and surface resources. To determine the SPI, the monthly rainfall values of each station are calculated for each of the desired time-scales, and then the cumulative rainfall values in each month are fitted to the gamma distribution. Finally, this distribution becomes a normal distribution.
Modified Kendall test
Precipitation trends
Monthly evaluation
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Precipitation trend analysis
For the Azna region, all the fluctuations were in the critical range and sudden fluctuations were observed at four times. Between the fifth and seventh years, or in other words, between the years 2003 and 2007, there were three sudden jumps, but they did not change the precipitation trend. The range of changes in Boroujerd was between −1 and 1.6. The stability of precipitation is observed in this station more than in other parts of the province. Therefore, no clear trend of increase or decrease was observed in the Boroujerd area either.
According to the calculations, there is no clear trend in precipitation changes in the Durood station. Only in the 11th and 18th years, sudden changes and jumps occurred, which were in the range of ±1.96. The data recorded at the Khoramabad station reaches back more than 66 years and can indicate the changes of precipitation in the entire province. The fluctuation range of the Mann–Kendall method at this station does not indicate an increasing or decreasing trend in precipitation. The time points that caused sudden changes in rainfall are the 16th year, the 46th year and the 64th year from 1954.
Kohdasht has the most influence in agriculture and water consumption in Lorestan province. The results showed that there was no clear trend during the statistical period. However, sudden changes have happened at different times. As in other parts of the province, there has not been a proven trend in the Kendall method in this area. There was a sudden jump in rainfall only in the eighth year (2007) and the 13th year (2012).
Despite the occurrence of a sudden jump in the Poledokhtar station where the intersection points of the graphs are observed, collisions have occurred within the critical limit. Therefore, by examining all the curves obtained by the Mann–Kendall method at different stations of Lorestan province, it can be concluded that no detectable increase or decrease in rainfall has been observed in the time range of the statistics.
LARSE-WG validation
Drought
One of the important and fundamental components in drought studies in each region is determining indicators to measure the severity and duration of the drought period. The standardized precipitation index is based on the probability of rainfall in time (month, season and year) and is used in drought planning. To determine the SPI, the long-term rainfall statistics are drawn according to a normal distribution curve and the amount. SPI numbers indicate drought conditions. Positive numbers indicate no drought and negative numbers indicate drought.
In the second future decade (2032–2042) of the Durood forecast, with 120 months, the most months with slight drought have been allocated. In this decade, Poledokhtar with four months of very dry and Aleshtar with 25 months of medium dry and 18 months of extremely dry conditions have the highest SPI classes.
Climatic effect on water consumption in agriculture
CONCLUSION
The climatic condition of Lorestan province is in a critical state; therefore, for long-term planning of water resources, it will be necessary to check the rainfall situation in the future so that solutions to deal with the crisis can be identified and used with sustainable management. The approach of this research can be summarized as follows. The phenomenon of precipitation can be considered a major challenge in the future in this province. The results of drought analysis showed that in all stations, the number of months with slightly dry conditions compared with other classes of drought shows an increase, so that in the first decade Durood with 117 months of slightly dry conditions has the highest amount. Also, Aleshtar showed special conditions with 26 months of medium dry and 16 months of extremely dry conditions. In general, the study conducted in Lorestan province and its results indicated that this area is moving toward a climate with lower humidity and higher temperature. Therefore, under the conditions of predicted climate change and due to the expected changes in temperature and precipitation, we will probably face water shortage in the future. For this reason, sustainable management measures should be taken in this area, taking into account the effects of climate change, and appropriate solutions should be provided in order to deal with water shortage.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
All relevant data are included in the paper or its Supplementary Information.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare there is no conflict.