An Integration of Statistics Temporal Methods to Track the Effect of Drought in a Shallow Mediterranean Lake

During the last decades, a progressive decrease of water level in shallow Mediterranean lakes was recorded. This contribution tried to identify whether the rapid decrease of the Lake Doiran (N. Greece) water level was associated with drought phenomena. Drought characteristics over the study area were revealed by employing the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) in different time scales. Negative trends of the SPI drought index were recognized by using the Mann-Kendall non parametric test, which suggested that drought conditions were intensified through time. The impact of the intense drought phenomena to the lake’s water level became evident by employing the Pearson correlation coefficient. A year ahead forecast of future drought conditions was achieved by training a hybrid ARIMA/ANN model. The predicted results indicated that mild drought conditions should be anticipated in the future and the water level would further drop as well. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012