Journal of Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers ISSN:1738-3692(Print) 2093-7709(Online) 한국농공학회논문집

This study proposes a method to evaluate agricultural reservoirs drought by modifying SWSI (Surface Water Supply Index). The method was applied to Geum river basin and the results were represented as spatially distributed information. The SWSI evaluates hydrological drought of watershed unit by selectively applying one or all of the components of snowpack, precipitation, streamflow and reservoir storage. South Korea has 22 % of agricultural area, and rice paddy covers 64 % among them. Usually paddy fields scattered along stream are irrigated by so many small agricultural reservoirs. It is difficult to evaluate agriculture drought by the little information and large number of agricultural reservoirs. In this study, seven agricultural reservoirs over 10 million ton storage capacity were selected in Geum river basin, and the SWSI was evaluated for both upstream and downstream of the reservoirs using 16 years data (1991-2006). Using the results, multiple regression analyses with precipitation and reservoir storage as variables were conducted and the equations were applied to other watersheds. The spatial results by applying regression equations showed that the severe and moderate drought conditions of July and September in 1994, June in 1995, and May in 2001 were well expressed by the watershed unit.