Agricultural Drought in Ethiopia - Monitoring and Predicting Agricultural Drought: A Global Study - page 235

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carry out rain-fed agriculture. Hence, it would be appropriate to introduce
irrigated agriculture to reduce crop failure risk. Hence, some appropriate
controlling measures against the anthropogenic causes of drought should
be taken to minimize impacts of drought.
Rainfall and vegetation information obtained from satellite data has
been found to be a good supplement to the conventional data sources for
early warning in Ethiopia. In some remote and inaccessible areas these data
are the only available source of information. The fact that these data are
continuous in space and can be processed for remote areas in near-real time
has made them indispensable for drought monitoring. Yet these sources
have some shortcomings. They are still far from being the best data. Further
efforts are required to improve the accuracy of rainfall estimates and make
the best use of the vegetation index data.
Ethiopia suffers from droughts very often, and in some particular years
almost the whole territory is subjected to drought (NMSA, 1996a). The
seriousness of the climate-related food problem in Ethiopia requires fur-
ther development of an early warning system. One of the most important
aspects of the problem is to define the frequency at which drought may
occur during the crop-growing season in different parts of the country.
Preparation of drought probability map based on this information can help
develop an effective early warning system for monitoring drought.

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