Panagiotis D. Oikonomou

University of Vermont | UVM · Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

In this paper, we examine the interactions, decisions, and evaluations of an interdisciplinary team of researchers tasked with developing an intelligent (AI-based) agricultural decision support system (DSS) that can provide farmers site-specific information about managing nutrients on their land. By doing so, we answer the following research questi...

Climate Change impacts start to be more evident all-around, and the cryosphere in the Hindukush, Karakoram, and Himalayan (HKH) region is no exception. Changes in the timing and the amount of snow melt in the Upper Indus Basin (UIB) have water and food security implications for millions of people living in the highlands and lowlands in the region....

Natural resources degradation poses multiple challenges, particularly to environmental and economic processes. It is usually difficult to identify the degree of degradation and the critical vulnerability values in the affected systems. Thus, among other tools, indices (composite indicators) may also describe these complex systems or phenomena. In t...

The scope of the present research is to assess drought events using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), which can provide accurate results of drought features on a spatiotemporal scale for Greece. The climate in Greece is a typical northern Mediterranean, with most of the rainfall events noted throughout the period between November and Apri...

Many recent studies have attributed the observed variability of cyanobacteria blooms to meteorological drivers and have projected blooms with worsening societal and ecological impacts under future climate scenarios. Nonetheless, few studies have jointly examined their sensitivity to projected changes in both precipitation and temperature variabilit...

The determination of instream flows for preserving or improving aquatic ecosystems’ health often includes challenges caused by varied hydraulic conditions, ecological criteria, and socioeconomic considerations. Despite the abundance of available methodologies, there are few available desktop or online applications enabling rapid assessment of instr...

The questions of scale, limit, and areal extent are central points for any drought assessment effort. Drought indices, such as the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), are assisting to demarcate drought characteristics and spatial extent. The current approach utilizes the E-OBS g...

Desertification constantly and diachronically manifested itself as one of the most critical environmental issues to be confronted and mitigated by society. This work presents the development of a land desertification risk Expert System (ES) for assessing the application of different land management practices by utilizing indicators through a desert...

Population growth, socioeonomic development, and climate change will add pressures on limited water resources, especially in the arid Arabian Peninsula countries, where overutilization of renewable and nonrenewable aquifers takes place. Meeting future challenges requires institutions to be proactive and adapt to regional environmental transformatio...

Since 1973 the Colorado Water Conservation Board has appropriated over 1,500 instream flow water rights in mountainous streams, covering nearly 8,500 miles, in order to preserve the natural environment. Determining the minimum required water quantity for reasonably healthy ecosystems can be a challenging task due to hydraulic conditions, ecological...

The degradation of natural resources at an intense rate creates serious problems in the environmental systems particularly with the compounding effects of climatic vagaries and changes. On the one hand, desertification is a crucial universal, mostly an anthropogenic environmental issue affecting soils all over the world. On the other hand, drought...

Drought is a complex natural hazard with its adverse multifaceted impacts cascading in every physical and human system. The vulnerability magnitude of various areas to drought mostly depends on their exposure to water deficiency, the existing water management policy framework and its implementation. The Standardized Drought Vulnerability Index (SDV...

Indices are used for representing complex phenomena; however, concerns usually arise regarding their objectivity and reliability, particularly dealing with their uncertainties during the development process. The current overarching objective is to reveal the significance of employing different weighting techniques in the application of the Standard...

Any attempt for the application of integrated drought management, requires identifying and characterizing the event per se. The questions of scale, boundary, and of geographic areal extend are of central concern for any efforts of drought assessment, impacts identification, and thus of drought mitigation implementation mechanisms. The use of drough...

Groundwater level knowledge is one of the crucial information for sustainable use of groundwater resources and efficient and effective conjunctive management of surface and groundwater resources. Despite the fact that there is an increase of water related datasets collected, still groundwater information remains one of the Achilles heel in terms of...

The current work presents the application of the seasonal Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average Model (ARIMA) using the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) as a drought indicator and then depicting the spatial distribution through geo-statistical methods. Greece is very often facing the hazardous impacts of droughts, hence presenting an almost i...

Drought is a complex natural phenomenon that lacks a universally accepted definition, thus it is difficult to confront holistically. Several efforts have been made towards managing the widespread and catastrophic drought impacts. In this quest, the concept of vulnerability to drought seems to offer some significant potential. In the present attempt...