Drought early warning in irrigation area by integrating surface water and groundwater

The purpose of this paper is to build a drought early warning system for Jinghuiqu Irrigation Area in China. In former research, the authors (Huang and Yuan Water Resour Res 40(6):W064011-W0640113, 2004, Huang and Chou, Water Resour Res 41:2004W, 2005; Adv Water Resour 31(4):649-660, 2008) have developed the drought early warning system by taking multiple hydrological factors into account the practicality and applicability of the model have been verified by series of case study. As far as irrigation area is concerned, precipitation and groundwater should be considered as important factors. The storage and distribution of groundwater is generally more complicated in a region; groundwater table and aquifer condition could change intensively in different areas; it is difficult to assess the level of drought directly. To deal with this problem, different fuzzy membership functions were put forward in this paper according to fluctuation of the groundwater level in a year, that is, the uprising period and descending period. Precipitation was also discussed in this paper for assessing its effects on current drought situation and future water consumption situation. By taking two typical dry years for examples, it was proved that the drought early warning model can be applied very well for drought early warning and drought management on irrigation area by integrated surface water and groundwater.