Climate Variability and Change—Hydrological Impacts (Proceedings of the Fifth FRIEND World
Conference held at Havana, Cuba, November 2006), IAHS Publ. 308, 2006, 315–318.
A study of the spatial extension of agricultural drought
in Cuba and its hyper-annual trends
OSCAR SOLANO, RANSÉS VÁZQUEZ & MARÍA E. MARTÍN
Centro de Meteorología Agrícola, Instituto de
Meteorología, Apartado postal 17032, CP 11700, Habana 17, Cuba
oscar.solano@insmet.cu
Abstract The average conditions of
the spatial extension of agricultural drought
in Cuba during a natural year and in the hydrological
rainy and semi-rainy seasons were studied. The methods used to diagnose agricultural drought were based upon the
water balance results from each element of the soil–plant–atmosphere complex,
which made it possible to identify for each period the zones of the country
that were most affected by this extreme climatic event and its hyper-annual
trend. The results achieved show a trend to a surface increase of severe
agricultural drought in Cuba during the study period.
Key words agricultural drought; geographic
information systems; agroclimatic zoning; hyper-annual trends; Cuba