Research Article Drought Analyses of the Horn´ ePoˇ zitavie Region (Slovakia) in the Period 1966–2013 Jaroslav Vido , 1 Paul´ ına Nalevankov´ a, 1 J´ an Valach, 2 Zbyˇ sek ˇ Sustek, 3 and Tsegaye Tadesse 4 1 Department of Natural Environment, Faculty of Forestry, Technical University in Zvolen, T.G. Masaryka 24, 960 01 Zvolen, Slovakia 2 Department of Land and Water Resources Management, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Slovak University of Technology, Radlinsk´ eho 11, 810 05 Bratislava, Slovakia 3 Institute of Zoology SAS, D´ ubravsk´ a cesta 9, 845 06 Bratislava, Slovakia 4 National Drought Mitigation Center, University of Nebraska, 819 Hardin Hall, 3310 Holdrege Street, P. O. Box 830988, Lincoln, NE 68583–0988, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Jaroslav Vido; vido@tuzvo.sk Received 30 January 2019; Accepted 30 May 2019; Published 11 July 2019 AcademicEditor:HerminiaGarc´ ıaMozo Copyright©2019JaroslavVidoetal.isisanopenaccessarticledistributedundertheCreativeCommonsAttributionLicense, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. isstudyfocusesonthecharacterizationofhistoricaldroughtoccurrencesintheHorn´ ePoˇ zitavieregionofSlovakiaovertheperiod 1966–2013usingStandardizedPrecipitation-EvapotranspirationIndex(SPEI).TrendanalyseswereevaluatedbytheMann–Kendall (MK) test as well as cumulative sum of rank difference (CRD) test. e results showed that drought occurs in the region regularly (recurrentclimatefeature),whilethetrendanalysisindicatedthetrendtowardmorearidclimaticconditions.However,CRDtrend analysesshowedthatthesubtrendchangeddirectiontowardlessdrierconditionsinthelate1980sandearly1990s.AnalysesofSPEI trendsinindividualmonthsshowedadecreasingtrendofdroughtoccurrencesduringthecoldmonthsoftheyear(i.e.,Octoberto March), while an increasing trend was indicated from April to August. e evaluation of the impact of drought on agricultural production based on the oilseed rape yield indicated that drought represents a significant natural risk for the agrarian sector of the region.Inaddition,AugustvalueoftheSPEIforsixmonthswasevaluatedasagoodindicatorofdroughtimpactsonagriculture.e trend analyses revealed no significant increase of drought impacts on agricultural production within the studied period. 1. Introduction Droughtisanaturaldisasterthataffectsseveralaspectsofthe human society. Because drought is a creeping phenomenon (gradual unnoticeable onset), its impacts could be devas- tating [1]. is gradual onset of drought results from the cumulative precipitation deficit that could be worsened by evapotranspiration total, which represents a passive com- ponent of climatic water balance [2]. Because of this, drought episodes have wide-range im- pacts [3, 4]. Extreme forest fires in Mediterranean [5], hy- drological drought throughout Europe [6], or frequent agricultural drought in Central Europe [7, 8] are demon- stration of some drought impacts. In case of prolonged drought episodes, socioeconomic and pure economic losses become visible [9–11]. Because of this, identifying the historical patterns, trends, and impacts of droughts provides valuable in- formation for disaster prevention and proactive activities that are aimed at mitigating droughts and reducing vul- nerability of the society in the future [12]. Prolonged and devastating drought episodes in last few decades have been thoroughly studied [9, 11, 13–15]. ese studies are mostly carried out using a variety of droughtindicesandindicatorsbasedonspecificapplication and location [4, 16–18]. Among the variety of indices, Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) [19], Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) [20], and Hindawi Advances in Meteorology Volume 2019, Article ID 3576285, 10 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/3576285