Drought monitoring is crucially important for agriculture and freshwater planning and management. Over the years several indices have been proposed to detect and monitor droughts each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The most widely accepted index is standardized precipitation index (SPI) which is based on probability concept. In the present study the SPI is used to detect drought events on temporal basis of Jagdalpur area of Bastar district of Chattisgarh, India. Monthly precipitation data from 1970 to 2005 for Jagdalpur were used to compute SPI values. The computation of SPI series was done for short, intermediate as well as for long time scales. Temporal SPI results show that the years 1972, 1974, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1998 and 1999 were found to be moderately drought affected years in the period of 30 years for Jagdalpur region. Severe drought occurred in the years 1987, 1996 and 2002. 12-month SPI calculation indicates that years 1997 and 2003 experienced extreme droughts.
Crop, Drought, Precipitation, SPI
