Monitoring Agricultural Drought: The Case of Kenya - Monitoring and Predicting Agricultural Drought: A Global Study - page 240

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Line
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-0.9
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Long
PgEn

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Fig ure 18.1 Interannual
variability of rainfall for
standard seasons in Kenya.

edly drought-tolerant crop such as bulrush millet. In both cases, maize was
preferred to millet due to dietary habits of these people, who did not take
into account the fragility of the marginal areas.

D rought Monitoring
The Drought Monitoring Center in Nairobi (DMCN) was established
in 1989 to monitor drought conditions in the Greater Horn of Africa
(GHA), a region comprising 10 African countries (Burundi, Djibouti, Er-
itrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda).
Some of the techniques the DMNC uses to monitor drought are described
below.

H istorical Climatic Data

Drought indices are derived by comparing current observations with his-
torical records. The previous records are usually first standardized and then