Abstract:
—Drought and flood are the simple most significant
climatological hazards in Sri Lanka, which primarily affects agricultural productivity. Proper understanding and investigation of climatic
extremes like drought and floods play a key role in planning
and management of the household, municipal, agricultural and industrial
activities even with varied water availability. Therefore, the present
the study aimed to assess onset, severity, and occurrence of drought and
wet episodes (months) in Kuruwita region, which belongs to the Low
Country Wet Zone Agro-ecological region using the Standardized
Precipitation Index (SPI) at various time scales. SPI analyzed at 12
months’ time interval revealed that out of 45 years of the study period
(1961-2005), there were only four (1976, 1980-1981 and 1996) and
six (1985-1986, 1988-1989, 2003-2004) drought and wet hydrological
years, respectively. Further, the hydrological years 1981 and 2004
were identified as more affected years by drought and wet events,
respectively, with a relatively higher occurrence of climate extremes
depicted by SPI, than normal conditions. The South-West monsoon
(SWM) was found to be more prone to extreme climatic conditions,
leading the Yala cropping season to become more abnormal with
the occurrence of more drought and wet months in Kuruwita. Therefore,
the study suggests that the implementation of proper mitigative measures
like installation of rainwater harvesting systems, reuse or recycling
of rainwater, cultivation of stress-tolerant crop varieties, adaption
of different cropping systems would be beneficial to minimize such
adverse effects and for sustainable development in Kuruwita area.
