TITLE:
Designing a Drought Monitoring System for Caribbean SIDS
AUTHORS:
Kyle Alexander, Gabrielle Thongs
KEYWORDS:
Drought, Climate Change, Caribbean, SIDS, GIS, SPI
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.11 No.2,
February
27,
2023
ABSTRACT: There are limited drought studies for the Caribbean.
This is concerning since drought is not only one of the most devastating
disasters in the region, but it is also one of the least understood disasters.
Very few papers analyze new ways to identify and monitor this disaster. Another
major arguable gap in research is the Caribbean’s sole focus on the
meteorological drought and disregard of the agricultural drought. This is an
important omission because of the significant
negative impacts drought has on the Caribbean occurs in the agricultural
and forestry sectors. Not considering this in drought monitoring systems in the Caribbean means that a major part of the
phenomena is overlooked. Therefore, this study has focused on bridging
this gap. It has sought to establish a system to strengthen drought’s early
warning. To accomplish this, three predetermined conditions of drought,
precipitation, land surface temperature and vegetation conditions were used to
derive the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI), the Temperature Condition Index
(TCI) and the Vegetation Condition Index (VCI), in order to analyze drought
conditions. The drought vulnerability map
found that the SPI, TCI and VCI all correlated with past drought events. The study also produced an agricultural drought map. This study, therefore, aims to build resilience by providing accurate
information on the duration, intensity and spatial variability of droughts in
Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS).