Objective
The project aims to identify and model the parameters which play an important role in the drought-degradation relationship and to develop an integrated model, in order to assess the effect of various drought scenarios on vegetation and soil in the Mediterranean countries and to assess the feasibility of various long term drought alleviation strategies for water and soil conservation.
The project will be carried out according the following steps:
- Improvement of point and regional drought estimation. This will be based on the stochastic analysis of point drought using the Theory of Runs andor Alternating Renewal Process, the rationalization of drought estimators (drought threshold and timing of drought) and the improvement of drought regionalization using the principle of stochastic superposition of the point processes.
- Collection and analysis of data. The rate of forest decrease and the decrease in yield of reference crops in rainfed agriculture will be collected in experimental areas in Italy (hill area of South Sicily with wheat cultivation and Flascio Forest catchment) and the central Greece (Mornos and Evinos catchment). These data, in conjunction with aerial photographs, will be analysed for assessing the vegetation and soil degradation.
- Deterministic "filter" design. Using multivariate regression analysis, a deterministic "filter" will be constructed, including the vegetation and soil degradation estimators and incorporating all the other factors, such as soil type and depth, planttrees characteristics, inclination, orientation and other geomorphological characteristics.
- Integrated model synthesis and implementation. Using the previous components an integrated model will be formulated. Several climatic scenarios will be analysed and their impacts on vegetation and soil will be assessed.
This methodology will be used to investigate drought mitigation measures, to compare long term drought alleviation strategies in the Mediterranean countries and may be applied in other European countries with similar climatic characteristics.
Fields of science
Topic(s)
Data not availableCall for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
15773 Zografou, Athens
Greece