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The start and duration of a drought are often not easy to define. The advance and onset are usually slow and the social and economic impacts can then extend over a long period. In this study, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) was used to describe and compare droughts in different periods and regions under different climatic conditions. The importance of the index lies in its simplicity and in its ability to identify the beginning and end of a drought event. Thus it may be a useful tool for drought contingency planning. This paper examines the SPI by evaluating its application using historical precipitation data from nine weather stations in China. Different time series data covering the period 1980 to 2011 and for differing timescales of 3, 9 and 24 months were used. The results underline the potential of the SPI to inform drought alerts and forecasting efforts as part of a drought contingency planning strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on land use planning topics, including "Historical Amnesia: New Urbanism and the City of Tomorrow," "More Than Sector Theory: Homer Hoyt's Contributions to Planning Knowledge" and "Methodology for the Survival Analysis of Urban Building Stocks."

The article discusses the possibility that the glaciers of the Tibetan plateau could be melted by global warming. This would lead to short-term floods and long-term drought for large sections of Asia, including China and India. Scientific studies are cited which indicate that glaciers around the world began to diminish in the 1950's, staged a modest comeback in the 1970's, and rapidly began shrinking again in the 1980's. Large and geopolitically important river systems such as the Yellow River and the Mekong are dependent on water from the glaciers of the Tibetan plateau.