Comparison of remotely sensed and meteorological data-derived drought indices in mid-eastern China

Abstract

Numerous drought indices have been developed and applied to monitor the severity of drought. It has been demonstrated that the evaluation of the indices is very important for further utilization of remotely sensed and meteorological information. The objective of this article is to investigate and compare the different methods derived from satellite/meteorological data for drought monitoring during the typical dry year (2006) in mid-eastern China. The compared six drought indices include the vegetation condition index (VCI), percent of average seasonal greenness (PASG), temperature condition index (TCI), vegetation supply water index (VSWI), percentage of precipitation anomalies (PPA) and standardized precipitation index (SPI). These indices are calculated based on different data sources including reflective data, thermal data, the combination of reflective and thermal data and meteorological data. The correlation matrix and regression relationships among the integrals under all drought indices, the integral under the relative air humidity (RAH) curve and cumulative rainfall at the location of 11 agro-meteorological stations for 2006 were calculated. Spatial comparison analysis among the drought indices reveals that all the indices have certain coincidence in the detected regional-scale distribution of drought especially those derived from the same data set, while obviously local-scale distribution differences were found among the different groups of indices. Compared to curves of the reflective and thermal indices, the overall trend of VSWI series has better consistence with the PPA curve. Based on correlation and regression analysis, it is demonstrated that VSWI can better reflect both the amount of precipitation and the severity of drought due to lack of rainfall. Furthermore, land surface temperature (LST) contributes more to the result of hybrid index (VSWI) than reflective information. There is logarithmic relationship between integral of VSWI and cumulative precipitation, while obvious linear correlations were found between integral under VSWI curve and integral under the RAH/TCI/PASG curves. According to the filed observation of droughts from agro-meteorological stations in the study area, it can be concluded that any single index is not sufficient to precisely depicting

Drought monitoring in the Brazilian Semiarid region

“…A number of drought indices, including meteorological (Wilhite and Glantz 1985), remote sensed, hydrological and other indicators, have been used to measure drought impacts (Palmer 1965, 1968, Kogan 1990, 2002, McKee et al 1993, Keyantash and Dracup 2004, Bhuiyan et al 2006, Yagci et al 2011, Zhou et al 2012, Du et al 2013, Yang et al 2013, Abbas et al 2014, Cunha et al 2015. Traditional methods of drought assessment and monitoring rely on rainfall data (e.g., Precipitation Percentile).…”

Assessment of remotely sensed drought features in vulnerable agriculture

“…In this context there are two types of remote sensing systems for drought assessment: meteorological and environmental (or resource) satellites. Meteorological satellites have also two types, namely geostationary such as METEOSAT and geosynchronous such as NOAA/AVHRR, and can contribute to operational monitoring and assessment of drought (Caccamo et al, 2011;Zhou et al, 2012). Similarly, environmental satellites such as LAND-SAT, SPOT and recently IKONOS, WV2 with high to very high resolution, but low frequency of coverage, can contribute to land-use classification and qualitative features of drought and less to quantitative assessments (Peled et al, 2010).…”

The effect of land-cover change on vegetation greenness-based satellite agricultural drought indicators: a case study in the southwest climate division of Indiana, USA

“…SPI was developed to measure solely precipitation deficit from long-term averages over multiple time periods (McKee, Doesken, and Kleist 1993;McKee, Doesken, and Kleist 1995). Besides meteorological drought applications of SPI and PDSI, the drought information obtained by these two indices has been compared with that acquired by VCI (Bhuiyan, Singh, and Kogan 2006;Jain et al 2009Jain et al , 2010Quiring and Ganesh 2010;Zhou et al 2012). In this study, these two meteorological drought indicators will be used to measure seasonal weather conditions, as well as to validate agricultural drought information obtained through VCI.…”

“…In this study, the more popular NDVI-derived VCI will be utilized to investigate the impacts of land-cover change on satellite drought indicators. The VCI has been used many times to detect and monitor droughts around the globe (Kogan 1993(Kogan , 1995b(Kogan , 2001Liu and Kogan 1996;Unganai and Kogan 1998;Singh, Roy, and Kogan 2003;Jain et al 2009;Jain et al 2010;Yagci et al 2012;Zhou et al 2012). To be specific, NDVI-based satellite indices are suitable for agricultural drought monitoring, so agricultural drought monitoring is the focus of the study.…”