Author(s): L. Bonifacio Fernandez

Linked Author(s): Bonifacio Fernandez L.

Keywords: No Keywords

Abstract: Droughts are essentially of meleorological origin but its consequences affect thegeneral behavior of the elements of the hydrological cycle,particularly streamflows.Theproperties of both types of droughts,meteorological and hydrological,are related throughoutthe response of the watershed which can act altering duration,intensity,size and othercuantitative characteristics of droughts.The properties of runs produced by the time series ofwater supply and demand as introduced by Yevjevich(1967)and methodologically detailed byDracup et al(1980 a,b)or Yevjevich et al.(1983)are used to identify and characterizedroughts.These procedures have been used to identify and to evaluate the properties of recentdroughts in several watershed in the Los Andes mountains zone of Chile(Fernández et al,1988;1990a and 1990b).In this zone weather conditions are highly variable and stronglyinfluenced by the meteorological conditions in the South Pacific Ocean.Since watersheds inthe zone are usually of small size they are affected by meteorological drought in the occurrenceand properties of streamflow shortages.In this paper a procedure to evaluate the response ofthe watershed to meteorological drought is developed and tested.The method is based in aTransfer Function model to relate the time series of precipitation and streamflow.Also theproperties of the watershed that affect its response to meteorological drought are detected.

DOI:

Year: 1991