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Drought is a natural phenomenon that occurs when the availability of water is significantly below the normal levels during a shorter or longer period of time and cannot meet the necessary demand. This study focused on hydrological drought assessment of the Tisza River on four gauging stations: Vásárosnamény, Szolnok, Szeged, and Senta for the period 1964-2018. An effective Streamflow Drought Index (SDI) has been recently proposed and widely used for determining hydrological droughts. Both long- and short-term droughts have very severe impacts on the investigated locations. Two drought periods can be singled out: the first period was from 1983 to 1993, with the exceptions in 1985 and 1987. This period is characterized by higher absolute SDI values on Vásárosnamény (-0.84) and Szolnok (-0.87) than on Szeged (-0.29) and Senta (-0.40) stations. The second period was more severe and lasted from 2011 to 2015, with an average SDI value of -1.32 on Vásárosnamény, -1.08 on Szolnok, -0.53 on Szeged, and -0.57 on Senta station. The Mann-Kendall test results indicate that there is no trend indicating transition from humid towards more arid condition over the investigated period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Droughts are natural hazards that endanger the safety of population, their property and can create serious agricultural and ecological problems over the affected region. An analysis of the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) was performed by using the database of sixty years (1956-2016) of the monthly precipitation for the nine meteorological stations in Vojvodina region (Serbia). The SPI has been used for drought determination. The present study investigates the application of k-means clustering methods on the SPI at the 12-month timescale values to detect distinct drought clusters. For the purpose of determining the optimal number of clusters, the Gap Statistics was used. The results show that the total of four clusters (regions) can be identified in Vojvodina: three stations are listed in region 1 (Sombor, Palić, and Novi Sad), two stations in region 2 (Bač and Sremska Mitrovica), region 3 is a single-station region (Bela Crkva), while in region 4, three stations are grouped (Kikinda, Zrenjanin, and Vršac). The Mann-Kendall test has shown that only in region 1 there is a trend in SPI values ranging from arid towards more humid conditions in the 1956-2016 period. In other regions no trend was observed in the data series. These results could contribute to water resources and agricultural planning and management in Vojvodina region and also confirm the usefulness of clustering methods for drought regionalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism development, if not sustainable, could threat and affect the environment as an object of tourists' interest. Accordingly, hotels as a type of tourism organizations within a destination, are trying to involve sustainable business activities in their operations in order to protect the environment. In hotels within developed countries, sustainable activities are already implemented in the business and they are in the balance with the environment. However, implementation of these activities within societies in transition, such as Serbia, is still in initial level, which is confirmed in this research. The subject of this paper is, therefore, oriented toward the business activities of hotels located within Kopaonik, popular destination of winter tourism and National Park of Serbia, and these activities are researched through the employees' perspective of ecological, socio-cultural and economic principles of the hotel business. Methods used in the paper are: descriptive, comparative, statistical and the critical one. Also, a survey research was conducted for the purpose of the paper and it obtained a sample of 211 hotel employees. The research results explained the current state within the hotel business of Kopaonik related to activities focused on ecological, socio-cultural and economic principles of sustainable development. Also, results indicate the level of employees' job satisfaction and the level of their job commitment in accordance with hotels' involvement in sustainable practices. All researched constructs of the paper are interpreted as important aspects of Kopaonik's sustainability on the tourist market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]