scholarly journals Evaluating drought risk in data-scarce contexts. The case of southern Angola

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (S1) ◽  
pp. 44-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Limones ◽  
Javier Marzo-Artigas ◽  
Marcus Wijnen ◽  
Aleix Serrat-Capdevila
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Meteorological Drought ◽  
Drought Risk ◽  
The South ◽  
Drought Vulnerability ◽  
Priority Areas ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rainfall Anomalies ◽  
Structured Approach

Abstract This paper pursues a methodological objective, developing and validating a structured approach for the recognition of areas under the highest levels of drought risk, suitable for data-scarce environments. The approach is based on recent scientific outcomes and methods and can be easily adapted to different contexts in subsequent exercises. The research reviews the history of hydro-meteorological drought in the south of Angola and characterizes the experienced hazard in the episode from 2012. Also, it intends to portray the socioeconomic vulnerabilities and the exposure to the phenomenon in the region to fully comprehend the risk. A list and map of these areas at high risk are two of the main outputs of this work. The results demonstrate that most of the region experienced a severe multi-year meteorological drought that was intensifying at the time of writing this paper, and that the majority of its impacts started immediately after the rainfall anomalies appeared. Last, the study confirms that the set of indicators used reveals different facets of vulnerability, leading to different drought vulnerability profiles in the south of Angola and, consequently, to several varieties of priority areas prone to distinctive impacts.

scholarly journals Agricultural Drought Risk Assessment in Southwest China

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 1064 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhaoqi Zeng ◽  
Wenxiang Wu ◽  
Zhaolei Li ◽  
Yang Zhou ◽  
Yahui Guo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Southwest China ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Rain Gauge ◽  
Agricultural Drought ◽  
Drought Risk ◽  
Severe Drought ◽  
Monthly Precipitation ◽  
Drought Vulnerability ◽  
Agricultural Drought Risk

Drought disasters jeopardize agricultural production and are expected to become more serious in the context of global climate change. However, in China, little attention has been paid to evaluating agricultural drought risk in humid areas (such as in Southwest China), which have also been affected by severe drought in recent years. In this work, we used the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), which was computed from high-quality monthly precipitation and temperature data from 92 rain-gauge stations across Southwest China, to study the drought characteristics (e.g., intensity, duration, and frequency) and their decadal variations from 1960 to 2017. Furthermore, we applied a widely accepted conceptual model that emphasizes the combined role of drought hazard (calculated by the intensity and frequency of drought) and agricultural drought vulnerability (integrated with high-resolution soil properties, climate, topography, irrigation, and gross domestic product) to conduct a spatial assessment of agricultural drought risk at a 1-km grid scale. The results revealed that drought has become more serious and frequent in Southwest China, especially since the 2000s. About 27.4% of the agricultural area has been exposed to an extremely high risk of drought, 33.5% to a high risk, 22.5% to a moderate risk, and 16.6% to a low risk. The extreme agricultural risk areas were located mainly in northeastern and southeastern Chongqing, southwestern Sichuan, northeastern and eastern Guizhou, and central and eastern Yunnan. Our findings highlighted that more attention should be paid to the agricultural drought risk in humid regions of China. Furthermore, this work could set the stage for policy makers and practitioners to take measures to reduce the agricultural drought risk in Southwest China.

scholarly journals Characteristics of drought vulnerability for maize in the eastern part of Northwest China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying Wang
Keyword(s):  
Probability Distribution ◽  
Information Diffusion ◽  
Extreme Values ◽  
Standardized Precipitation Index ◽  
Meteorological Drought ◽  
Northwest China ◽  
Gansu Province ◽  
Diffusion Method ◽  
Drought Risk ◽  
Drought Vulnerability

<p>Based on disaster theory, combined with the standardized precipitation index (SPI) and relative meteorological yield data, meteorological factors and social factors were comprehensively considered to assess the vulnerability of maize (Zea mays) to drought. The probability distribution curve for of the degree of meteorological drought and relative meteorological yield was obtained by using information distribution technology, using a two-dimensional normal information diffusion method to construct the vulnerability relationship between degree of meteorological drought and relative meteorological yield. This resulted in drought vulnerability curves for maize in the eastern part of Northwest China (Gansu, Ningxia, and Shaanxi), and calculations of drought risk for maize in each province. The probability of moderate drought in Shaanxi was relatively high, followed by Gansu and Ningxia. The probability distribution of Gansu was more discrete. The probability of strong meteorological drought in Ningxia was high, followed by Shaanxi and Gansu. Probability distribution of relative meteorological yield for maize in Gansu Province was highly discrete, with thick tailings, large uncertainties, and more extreme values, which were strongly affected by meteorological conditions, followed by Shaanxi and Ningxia. When the degree of meteorological drought was low, the relative meteorological yield of maize increased within 10%. This is because mild drought stress can promote the adaptability of maize to drought and stimulate maize’s overcompensatory effect. With an increased degree of meteorological drought, the relative meteorological yield of maize gradually declined. When the degree of meteorological drought exceeded –2.2, maize was most vulnerable to drought in Shaanxi followed by Ningxia and Gansu. When meteorological drought was < –2.2, maize was most vulnerable to drought in Shaanxi followed by Gansu and Ningxia. Shaanxi had the highest maize drought risk, followed by Gansu and Ningxia. This research had a clear physical background and clear risk connotations. The results provide a data foundation and a theoretical basis for drought prevention and disaster reduction for maize in the study area.</p>

scholarly journals Estimation of Vulnerability and Risk to Meteorological Drought in Mexico

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Neri ◽  
Víctor Magaña
Keyword(s):  
Water Productivity ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Meteorological Drought ◽  
Economic Losses ◽  
Drought Risk ◽  
Vulnerability Factors ◽  
Drought Vulnerability ◽  
Risk Management Strategies ◽  
Hydraulic Infrastructure ◽  
Impact Data

Abstract Prolonged droughts severely affect the economic, social, and environmental sectors in Mexico. The interest in reducing the costs of drought is now focused on prevention by means of vulnerability reduction. The present study proposes a methodology to estimate vulnerability and risk to drought, considering the physical, economical, and social factors that make regions of Mexico prone to experiencing hydrological and agricultural droughts. Recognizing that there is no universally accepted way to describe vulnerability, the proposed method defines the object under study, the natural hazard, and vulnerability factors by means of indicators. The vulnerability factors are related to water infrastructure, the condition of aquifers or water reservoirs, the levels of wastewater treatment, water productivity in agriculture, hydraulic infrastructure, and water tariffs. A drought vulnerability model for each Hydrological Administrative Region (RHA) in Mexico is obtained by combining the vulnerability indicators. The product of vulnerability and hazard results in risk estimates that are compared with impact data to validate the approach. Information on agricultural or hydrological drought is used as impact data. The validation process is an important step in the methodology, since it allows examination of the causes of disasters by the vulnerability factors and leads to risk management strategies. It is found that although vulnerability to meteorological drought in the agricultural and hydrological sectors in Mexico has decreased in recent years, the drought risk is still high and results in severe economic losses, such as those registered in central and northern Mexico during the 2011–12 prolonged drought.

Somewhere between Human, Nonhuman, and Woman

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 21-51
Author(s):  
Debashree Mukherjee
Keyword(s):  
Object Relations ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
The South ◽  
Hunger Strike ◽  
Cultural Events ◽  
Production Experience ◽  
Human Object ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of

In 1939, at the height of her stardom, the actress Shanta Apte went on a spectacular hunger strike in protest against her employers at Prabhat Studios in Poona, India. The following year, Apte wrote a harsh polemic against the extractive nature of the film industry. In Jaau Mi Cinemaat? (Should I Join the Movies?, 1940), she highlighted the durational depletion of the human body that is specific to acting work. This article interrogates these two unprecedented cultural events—a strike and a book—opening them up toward a history of embodiment as production experience. It embeds Apte's emphasis on exhaustion within contemporaneous debates on female stardom, industrial fatigue, and the status of cinema as work. Reading Apte's remarkable activism as theory from the South helps us rethink the meanings of embodiment, labor, materiality, inequality, resistance, and human-object relations in cinema.

The history of the geological development of the south of the Nepa-Botuoba anteclise during Nepa and Tira time

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.V. Plyusnin ◽  
◽  
R.R. Ibragimov ◽  
M.I. Gyokche ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
The South ◽  
History Of

THE HISTORY OF CATHOLICISM IN BASHKORTOSTAN: A BRIEF HISTORIOGRAPHIC OVERVIEW

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (4) ◽  
pp. 89-95
Author(s):  
F.A. KRYZHANOVSKY ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
General Nature ◽  
South Urals ◽  
The South ◽  
Middle Volga Region ◽  
History Of

The article examines the main publications covering the centuries-old history of the Catholic Church in the lands of modern Bashkortostan, as well as partly affecting the interaction of local Catholic communities with coreligionists from other cities located in the South Urals, as well as in the Middle Volga region. Unfortunately, there are quite a few special studies on the history of this Christian denomination in our republic. Many works, in one way or another related to this issue, are of a general nature and contain a schematic listing of factual information, or are more devoted to the history of national communities, for which this religion is, to a certain extent, one of the most important elements of traditional ethnic culture. Here it is necessary to note, first of all, publications on the history of the Polish and German diaspora, which provide information about the participation of representatives of these communities in the creation of Catholic parishes and public associations associated with charity and education. At the same time, the significance of the confessional aspect is to a much lesser extent revealed in works on the history of Latvian immigrants from Latgale, Belarusians and Ukrainians from Volyn and Eastern Galicia, who, due to various circumstances, left their homes during the First World War, as well as other Catholic emigrants from Central and Western Europe, located in the Ufa province at the beginning of the XX century. In some articles on demography and striking features of social stratification, one can find indirect references to the presence of Catholics, but this information only It is noteworthy that most publications indicate the middle of the 17th century as the earliest dating of the appearance of believing Catholics in the South Urals, and evidence of missionary trips to the Eastern Hungarians during the 13th-15th centuries allows us to make hypothetical assumptions about their role in the life of the local religious community. It can be noted that the presence of a certain part of Catholics on the territory of Bashkiria during the 16th20th centuries. was associated with forced migration due to the fact that, as a result of military clashes, some of them were captured, as well as due to participation in activities that conflicted with the interests of the Russian leadership are considered, with a few exceptions, only in the context of the problem of the origin of the Bashkir people, most likely due to the modest results of the preaching.

All men and beasts, lions, eagles, quails… Anthropomorphic and Zoomorphic Representations of Nations and States in Slavic Сultural Discourse

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Russian Empire ◽  
Imagined Communities ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Scientific Conference ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
The South ◽  
Russian Academy Of Sciences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

The book was compiled on the materials of the scientific conference “Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic representations of nations and states in the Slavic cultural discourse” (2019), held at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) and devoted to the history of the nations’ personifications and generalized ethnic images in period of “imagined communities” formation. This process is reconstructing on verbal and visual sources and by methods of various disciplines. The historical evolution of such zoomorphic incarnations of nations as an Eagle (in the Polish patriotic poetry of the first third of the 19th cent), a Falcon (in the South Slavic and Czech cultures in the 19th cent), a Griffin (during the formation of the Cassubian ethnocultural identity) is considered. The animalistic national representations in the Estonian caricature of the interwar twenty years of the 20th cent., so as the functioning of the Bear’s allegory as a symbol of Russia in modern Russian souvenir products are analyzed. The originality of zoomorphic symbolism in Polish and Soviet cultures is shown оn the examples of para- and metaheraldic images in XXth cent. The transformation of the verbal and visual images of “Mother Russia” personifications in Russian Empire was reconstructed. The evolution of various allegories of ethnic “Self” and “Others” is presented by caricatures of 19th – 20th cent. in Slovenian periodic and in Russian “Satyricon” journal (1914–1918).

“The last chord of the Silver Age”: science and culture in Crimea in 1920

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-4) ◽  
pp. 4-14
Author(s):  
Vladimir Kalinovsky ◽  
Alexander Puchenkov
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The South ◽  
Silver Age ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Short Period ◽  
The Crimea ◽  
Science And Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Russian Intelligentsia

This article is devoted to the development of science and culture in the short period of the Wrangel Crimea - 1920. At this time, the brightest figures of Russian culture of that time worked on the territory of the small Peninsula: O. E. Mandelstam, M. A. Voloshin, B.D. Grekov, G.V. Vernadsky, V.I. Vernadsky and others. The article provides an overview of the life and activities of the Russian intelligentsia in 1920 in the Crimea, based on materials of periodicals as the most important source for studying the history of the Civil war in the South of Russia whose value is to be fully evaluated.

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