Exploring relationships between drought characteristics and environmental flow conditions in Indian catchments

Environmental flow plays a crucial role in the sustainability of rivers and aquatic ecosystems. Reduction in the flow of rivers degrades its ecosystem functions and health, resulting in severe impacts on aquatic ecosystems. Additionally, meteorological drought, which occurs due to a substantial reduction in normal rainfall, subsequently affects the river flow. To understand such consequences, long-term observed flow data are required, which is not readily available for geographically different catchments. The present study is an effort to explore the relationship between the drought characteristics based on percent rainfall departure (