Wet-environment Evapotranspiration and Precipitation Standardized Index (WEPSI) for drought assessment and monitoring

Drought assessment and monitoring are essential for its proper management. Drought indices play a fundamental role in this. This research introduces the Wet-environment Evapotranspiration and Precipitation Standardized Index (WEPSI) for drought assessment and monitoring. WEPSI incorporates water supply and demand into the drought index calculation. WEPSI considers precipitation (P) for water supply and wet-environment evapotranspiration (ETw) for water demand. We use an asymmetric complementary relationship to calculate ETw with actual (ETa) and potential evapotranspiration (ETp). WEPSI is tested in the transboundary Lempa River basin in the Central American dry corridor. ETw is estimated based on evapotranspiration data calculated using the Water Evaluation And Planning (WEAP) system hydrological model. To investigate the performance of WEPSI, we compare it with two well-known meteorological indices (Standardized Precipitation Index and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index), together with a hydrological index (Standardized Runoff Index), in terms of statistical metrics and mutual information (MI). We compare WEPSI-derived droughts and historical information, including crop production, cereal yield, and the Oceanic Nino Index (ONI). Results show WEPSI has the highest correlation and MI, and the lowest deviation. It is consistent with the records of the crop production index, cereal yield, and the ONI. Findings show that WEPSI can be used for agricultural drought assessments.