Development of an annual drought classification system based on drought severity indexes.

In order to characterize the occurrence and intensity of droughts in the Doce River Basin, as well as to develop a system for its classification, four different drought indexes were evaluated: Percent of Normal Precipitation (PNP), Deciles Method (DM), Rainfall Anomaly Index (RAI) and Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). The indices were calculated annually, based on precipitation data from 89 rainfall stations of the Brazilian National Water Agency (ANA). Nine analysis units (AUs) were determined in the basin and the Thiessen Polygons method was used to obtain the average precipitation in the respective drainage areas. The indices were calculated for each AU and then related to the drought intensity classes. An overall classification of the indices was proposed for the drought classification system for a 30-year base period, from 1985 to 2015. The most critical hydrological years of the Doce River Basin in relation to the drought were 1994/1995, 2000/2001 and 2014/2015, the latter being the most critical of the last 30 years. The results show that the annual drought classification system proved to be efficient in the identification of events, allowing to verify that the Doce River Basin presents a severe climatic drought condition, on average, every seven years.

Ecohydrological modeling and environmental flow regime in the Formoso River, Minas Gerais State, Brazil.

This paper aimed at determining the environmental flow regime in a 1 km stretch of the Formoso River, MG, using River2D model. To carry out the ecohydrological modeling, the following information was used: bathymetry, physical and hydraulic features, and the Habitat Suitability Index for species of the Hypostomus auroguttatus. In the River2D, the Weighted Usable Areas were determined from the average long-term streamflows with percentage from 10% to 100%. Those streamflows were simulated for the later construction of optimization matrices that maximize the habitat area throughout the year. For H. auroguttatus Juvenile, higher values of Weighted Usable Area were associated with the percentage of 60% and 70% of the average long-term streamflows in October and September, respectively. For H. auroguttatus Adult, the highest value of Weighted Usable Area was associated with the percentage of 100% of the average long-term streamflow in September. The environmental flows found for this stretch of the Formoso River varied over the year. The lowest environmental flow was observed in December (2.85 m3 s-1), while the highest was observed in May (4.13 m3 s-1). This paper shows the importance of ecohydrological studies in forming a basis for water resources management actions.