Agricultural Drought Detection with MODIS Based Vegetation Health Indices in Southeast Germany

Droughts during the growing season are projected to increase in frequency and severity in Central Europe in the future. Thus, area-wide monitoring of agricultural drought in this region is becoming more and more important. In this context, it is essential to know where and when vegetation growth is primarily water-limited and whether remote sensing-based drought indices can detect agricultural drought in these areas. To answer these questions, we conducted a correlation analysis between the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Land Surface Temperature (LST) within the growing season from 2001 to 2020 in Bavaria (Germany) and investigated the relationship with land cover and altitude. In the second step, we applied the drought indices Temperature Condition Index (TCI), Vegetation Condition Index (VCI), and Vegetation Health Index (VHI) to primarily water-limited areas and evaluated them with soil moisture and agricultural yield anomalies. We found that, especially in the summer months (July and August), on agricultural land and grassland and below 800 m, NDVI and LST are negatively correlated and thus, water is the primary limiting factor for vegetation growth here. Within these areas and periods, the TCI and VHI correlate strongly with soil moisture and agricultural yield anomalies, suggesting that both indices have the potential to detect agricultural drought in Bavaria.

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DROUGHT MONITORING OVER PADDY FIELD AREA IN INDRAMAYU DISTRICT, WEST JAVA USING REMOTELY SENSED INDICES

International Journal of Remote Sensing and Earth Sciences (IJReSES) ◽

10.30536/j.ijreses.2008.v5.a1227 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Parwati ◽

Miao Jungang ◽

Orbita Roswintiarti

Keyword(s):

Soil Moisture ◽

Standardized Precipitation Index ◽

Meteorological Drought ◽

Condition Index ◽

Dry Season ◽

Precipitation Index ◽

Agricultural Drought ◽

Drought Monitoring ◽

West Java ◽

Vegetation Health

In this research, several meteorological and agricultural drought indices based on remote sensing data are built for drought monitoring over paddy area in Indramayu District, West Java, Indonesia. The meteorological drought index of Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is developed from monthly Outgoing Long Wave Radiation (OLR) data from 1980 to 2005. The SPI represents the deficient of precipitation. Meanwhile, the agricultural drought of Vegetation Health Index (VHI) was developed from daily Moderate-resolution ImagingSpectroradiometer (MODIS) data during dry season (May-August) 2003-2006. The VHI was designed to monitoring vegetation health, soil moisture, and thermal conditions. The result shows that the agricultural drought occurate in Indramayu District, especially in the northern and southern part during the dry season in 2003 and 2004. It is found that there is a strong correlation between VHI and soil moisture measured in the field (r=0.84). Key words:Agricultural drought, Meteorological drought, Standardized Precipitation Index, Temperature Condition Index, Vegetation Condition Index.

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ASSESSMENT AND MONITORING OF AGRICULTURAL DROUGHTS IN MAHARASHTRA USING METEOROLOGICAL AND REMOTE SENSING BASED INDICES

ISPRS Annals of Photogrammetry Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences ◽

10.5194/isprs-annals-iv-5-253-2018 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol IV-5 ◽

pp. 253-264 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

P. V. Aswathi ◽

B. R. Nikam ◽

A. Chouksey ◽

S. P. Aggarwal

Keyword(s):

Remote Sensing ◽

Meteorological Drought ◽

Condition Index ◽

Agricultural Drought ◽

Drought Indices ◽

Drought Assessment ◽

Sparse Vegetation ◽

Vegetation Health Index ◽

Agricultural Yield ◽

Remote Sensing Methods

Abstract. Drought is a recurring climatic event characterized by slow onset, a gradual increase in its intensity, and persistence for a long period depending upon the availability of water. Droughts, broadly classified into meteorological, hydrological and agricultural drought, which are interconnected to each other. India, being an agriculture based economy depends primarily on agriculture production for its economic development and stability. The occurrence of agriculture drought affects the agricultural yield, which affects the regional economy to a larger extent. In present study, agricultural and meteorological drought in Maharashtra state was monitored using traditional as well as remote sensing methods. The meteorological drought assessment and characterization is done using two standard meteorological drought indices viz. standard precipitation index (SPI) and effective drought index (EDI). The severity and persistency of meteorological drought were studied using SPI for the period 1901 to 2015. However, accuracy of SPI in detection of sub-monthly drought is limited. Therefore, sub-monthly drought is effectively monitored using EDI. The monthly and sub-monthly drought mapped using SPI and EDI, respectively were then compared and assessed. It was concluded that EDI serves as a better indicator to monitor sub-monthly droughts. The agricultural drought monitoring was carried out using the remote sensing based indices such as vegetation condition index (VCI), temperature condition index (TCI), vegetation health index (VHI), shortwave angle slope index (SASI) and the index which maps the agricultural drought in a better way was identified. The area under drought as calculated by various agricultural drought indices compared with that of the EDI, it was found that the results of SASI matched with results of EDI. SASI denotes different values for the dry and wet soil and for the healthy and sparse vegetation. SASI monitors the agricultural drought better as compared to other indices used in this study.

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An Agricultural Drought Index for Assessing Droughts Using a Water Balance Method: A Case Study in Jilin Province, Northeast China

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs11091066 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (9) ◽

pp. 1066 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Yijing Cao ◽

Shengbo Chen ◽

Lei Wang ◽

Bingxue Zhu ◽

Tianqi Lu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Soil Moisture ◽

Potential Evapotranspiration ◽

Condition Index ◽

Agricultural Drought ◽

Drought Indices ◽

Growing Seasons ◽

Dryness Index ◽

Vegetation Health Index

Drought, which causes the economic, social, and environmental losses, also threatens food security worldwide. In this study, we developed a vegetation-soil water deficit (VSWD) method to better assess agricultural droughts. The VSWD method considers precipitation, potential evapotranspiration (PET) and soil moisture. The soil moisture from different soil layers was compared with the in situ drought indices to select the appropriate depths for calculating soil moisture during growing seasons. The VSWD method and other indices for assessing the agricultural droughts, i.e., Scaled Drought Condition Index (SDCI), Vegetation Health Index (VHI) and Temperature Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI), were compared with the in situ and multi-scales of Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEIs). The results show that the VSWD method has better performance than SDCI, VHI, and TVDI. Based on the drought events collected from field sampling, it is found that the VSWD method can better distinguish the severities of agricultural droughts than other indices mentioned here. Moreover, the performances of VSWD, SPEIs, SDCI and VHI in the major historical drought events recorded in the study area show that VSWD has generated the most sensible results than others. However, the limitation of the VSWD method is also discussed.

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Capability of existing drought indices in reflecting agricultural drought in China

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-8845 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Zhe Zhao ◽

Kaicun Wang

Keyword(s):

Soil Moisture ◽

Crop Yield ◽

Vegetation Index ◽

Meteorological Data ◽

Growing Season ◽

The Other ◽

Agricultural Drought ◽

Drought Indices ◽

Yield Data ◽

Prediction Ability

A variety of drought indices have been constructed to monitor agricultural drought using ground and satellite data. Our study aimed to evaluate the performance of drought indices to indicate agricultural drought in China. Seven drought indices of four types were selected over the main agricultural regions of China: indices based on regular meteorological data (DImet), indices based on vegetation index (DIvi), indices based on soil moisture (DIsm), and synthesized indices (DIsyn). The independent reference data used here included three aspects: soil moisture, vegetation photosynthesis and crop yield data. The latter two reference datasets were selected to check drought impact on agriculture. Drought indices with short timescales are more sensitive to topsoil moisture. Drought indices have different abilities to capture vegetation photosynthesis condition during the growing season. Expect for the Yangtze region and North China region during the wheat growing season, the DImet and DIsyn show significant positive correlations with the sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), while the other drought indices have weaker or no correlations. For crop yield, the prediction ability of the drought indices show a similar pattern with the results for vegetation photosynthesis but with relatively large uncertainty. Generally, our study show that DImet have better or equivalent performance than that of the other types of drought indices, and DIsyn show the widest applicability. Our study may shed light on agricultural drought research in the future.

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A novel agricultural drought monitoring framework using remote sensing products

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10228 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Trupti Satapathy ◽

Meenu Ramadas ◽

Jörg Dietrich

Keyword(s):

Remote Sensing ◽

Soil Moisture ◽

Water Stress ◽

Land Surface ◽

Condition Index ◽

Agricultural Drought ◽

Drought Monitoring ◽

Crop Water ◽

Vegetation Health ◽

Crop Water Stress

Among natural hazards, droughts are known to be very complex and disastrous owing to their creeping nature and widespread impacts. Specifically, the occurrence of agricultural droughts poses a threat to the productivity and socio-economic development of countries such as India. In this study, we propose a novel framework for agricultural drought monitoring integrating the different indicators of vegetation health, crop water stress and soil moisture, that are derived from remote sensing satellite data. The drought monitoring is performed over Odisha, India, for the period 2000-2019. Soil moisture and land surface temperature datasets from GLDAS Noah Land Surface Model and surface reflectance data from MODIS (MOD09GA) are used in this study. We compared the utility of popular indices: (i) soil moisture condition index, soil moisture deficit index and soil wetness deficit index to represent the soil moisture level; (ii) temperature condition index, vegetation condition index and normalised difference water index to indicate vegetation health; (iii) short wave infrared water stress to represent crop water stress condition. Correlation analyses between these indices and the seasonal crop yields are performed, and suitable indicators are chosen. The popular entropy weight method is then used to integrate the indices and develop the proposed composite drought index. The index is then used for monitoring the agricultural drought condition over the study area in drought periods. The proposed framework for week- to month-scale monitoring have potential applications in identification of agricultural drought hotspots, analysis of trends in drought severity, and drought early warning for agricultural water management.

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Severe drought events inducing soil moisture depletion and evaporative stress across Poland during 1981-2019

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6509 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Urszula Somorowska

Keyword(s):

Soil Moisture ◽

Air Temperature ◽

Growing Season ◽

Drought Indices ◽

Severe Drought ◽

Monthly Precipitation ◽

Time Step ◽

Soil System ◽

Underlying Assumption ◽

Vegetation Health

In recent decades, an increasing frequency and severity of meteorological and hydrological droughts has been observed in most parts of Europe, including Poland. This is due to (among other factors) increasing atmospheric water demand, longer rainless periods, especially during the growing season, and decreasing winter snow retention. In consequence, a widespread soil moisture drying cascades to evaporative stress limiting the ecosystems productivity. Thus, a quantification of such events might give a better understanding of underlying inter-connected mechanisms. A range of different single or multiple indices are already in use to quantify the drought duration, severity and intensity. Moreover, recently introduced dedicated software tools help to conduct the spatial-temporal analysis of drought propagation through the hydrological system. In this study, I try to answer the question when, where and how the most severe droughts have been occurring during the last four decades, and in particular in the 21st century. Resulting from the weather extremes (precipitation and air temperature anomalies), the cascading impacts are analyzed as they subsequently occur through a subsurface soil system, and then translate into the evaporative stress and vegetation health conditions. The underlying assumption is that relevant drought indices might be derived from the reanalysis products including variables such as precipitation, air temperature, evapotranspiration and corresponding soil moisture estimates. For a relatively large territory (in this case over&#160; 300 thousand sq. kilometers) such data provide consistent set of variables allowing the multi-year analysis. Here, I used recently developed ERA5-land data, validated against basic variables acquired from the E-OBS data. First, drought events were identified using standardized indices at the 1-3-6 month time scales. Then, following a threshold approach, Contiguous Drought Area analysis was conducted in each time step for the growing season. Subsequently, the imprints of soil moisture depletion were detected in vegetation health quantified independently by remote sensing indices at relevant resolution. &#160;This study provides an evidence of moderate, severe and extreme drought occurrence. Recent biggest drought events occurred in 2003, 2005, 2006, &#160;2015, 2018 and 2019 as a consequence of high monthly precipitation deficits reaching 100% of the long-term norm, and the air temperature 1-5 degree C higher as referred to average monthly &#160;thermal conditions.

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Drought

Geography ◽

10.1093/obo/9780199874002-0215 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Woonsup Choi

Keyword(s):

Soil Moisture ◽

Atmospheric Circulation ◽

Agricultural Drought ◽

Subsurface Water ◽

Drought Indices ◽

Human Society ◽

Atmospheric Conditions ◽

Spatial And Temporal Patterns ◽

Circulation Anomalies ◽

Atmospheric Circulation Anomalies

Drought is a natural disaster that has plagued human society throughout history. However, the meaning of drought varies by perspective and academic discipline, and the cause of drought is difficult to pinpoint. Despite the variation in its meaning, drought generally refers to the condition of an abnormally low amount of water for a given climate. Here the water can be precipitation, streamflow, soil moisture, groundwater, reservoir storage, and the like, but the lack of precipitation is a precursor for other types of drought. The lack of precipitation is often associated with anomalous atmospheric conditions such as atmospheric-circulation anomalies, higher-than-normal temperatures, and lower-than-normal relative humidity. Sea surface temperature anomalies may lead to sustained atmospheric-circulation anomalies. Drought defined as a lack of precipitation is often called meteorological or climatological drought. Other drought types can be classified within the context of the affected sectors, such as agricultural, hydrological, and socioeconomic drought. Agricultural drought generally refers to a lack of soil moisture, and hydrological drought refers to a lack of surface and subsurface water (e.g., streamflow and groundwater). Socioeconomic drought hampers human activities such as industry or water supply. As meteorological drought persists, other types of drought can follow. Such definitions of drought are regarded as conceptual definitions, but operational definitions are also necessary for quantitative understanding and management of drought events. Operational definitions use quantitative indices to identify the occurrence and characteristics of drought events such as onset, duration, termination, and deficit volume of drought. Much of existing drought research concerns developing, revising, and applying drought indices to investigate spatial and temporal patterns of drought at various geographical scales. Drought research has progressed along several directions, such as causes of drought, characteristics of drought events, impacts, and mitigation. Each of these directions is represented by the works cited in this article.

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Commonly Used Drought Indices as Indicators of Soil Moisture in China

Journal of Hydrometeorology ◽

10.1175/jhm-d-14-0076.1 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 16 (3) ◽

pp. 1397-1408 ◽

Cited By ~ 43

Author(s):

Hongshuo Wang ◽

Jeffrey C. Rogers ◽

Darla K. Munroe

Keyword(s):

Soil Moisture ◽

Time Scales ◽

Standardized Precipitation Index ◽

Meteorological Drought ◽

Severity Index ◽

Agricultural Drought ◽

Weather Data ◽

Drought Indices ◽

Drought Severity ◽

Better Than

Abstract Soil moisture shortages adversely affecting agriculture are significantly associated with meteorological drought. Because of limited soil moisture observations with which to monitor agricultural drought, characterizing soil moisture using drought indices is of great significance. The relationship between commonly used drought indices and soil moisture is examined here using Chinese surface weather data and calculated station-based drought indices. Outside of northeastern China, surface soil moisture is more affected by drought indices having shorter time scales while deep-layer soil moisture is more related on longer index time scales. Multiscalar drought indices work better than drought indices from two-layer bucket models. The standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) works similarly or better than the standardized precipitation index (SPI) in characterizing soil moisture at different soil layers. In most stations in China, the Z index has a higher correlation with soil moisture at 0–5 cm than the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI), which in turn has a higher correlation with soil moisture at 90–100-cm depth than the Z index. Soil bulk density and soil organic carbon density are the two main soil properties affecting the spatial variations of the soil moisture–drought indices relationship. The study may facilitate agriculture drought monitoring with commonly used drought indices calculated from weather station data.

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Temporal and Spatial Comparison of Agricultural Drought Indices from Moderate Resolution Satellite Soil Moisture Data over Northwest Spain

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs9111168 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 9 (11) ◽

pp. 1168 ◽

Cited By ~ 31

Author(s):

Miriam Pablos ◽

José Martínez-Fernández ◽

Nilda Sánchez ◽

Ángel González-Zamora

Keyword(s):

Soil Moisture ◽

Agricultural Drought ◽

Drought Indices ◽

Soil Moisture Data ◽

Moderate Resolution ◽

Temporal And Spatial

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Total water consumption of cereals on the slopes of the Central District of Russia and zoned bioclimatic ratios

VEGETABLE CROPS OF RUSSIA ◽

10.18619/2072-9146-2020-6-120-125 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 120-125

Author(s):

N. N. Dubenok ◽

R. V. Kalinichenko ◽

M. V. Klimakhina ◽

E. V. Matsyganova ◽

K. B. Shumakova

Keyword(s):

Soil Moisture ◽

Water Balance ◽

Water Consumption ◽

Agricultural Land ◽

Elevated Temperatures ◽

Growing Season ◽

Total Water ◽

Total Water Consumption ◽

Daily Water ◽

Perennial Herbs

Relevance. In Russia the issue of resource-saving irrigation of agricultural land is one of the most urgent, and total water consumption is one of the most important elements of the water balance of irrigated territory. Analyze the basic methods of determining the total water consumption, determine the average daily water consumption, total water consumption and zonal bioclimatic ratios for oats, barley with planting perennial herbs and perennial herbs in the conditions of the Central Region of the Russian Federation. Materials and methods. The research was carried out on a stationary field experience in the Podolsk district of the Moscow District. To improve the individual elements of the water balance in these conditions were laid stationary water balancing sites (S=200 m2). The pre-21 thresholds for soil moisture was not less than 75%. The research was carried out in accordance with generally accepted methods and recommendations. Total water consumption during the growing season and in the phases of plant development was determined by the method of water balance. Results. The total water consumption of crops by elements of the slope varies significantly between the upper and lower elements of the slope difference is 12-15 mm, which should be taken into account when calculating irrigation regimes on sloped lands. At the top of the slope it is necessary to carry out 1-2 watering more than at the base of the slope. Differentiated watering along the length of the slope allows to save irrigation water by 10-15%. The water consumption of crops in the context of the experience was greater in April and September than in the other months of growing. This is due to climate indicators. Total evaporation from the soil and plant surfaces depends on soil moisture, crop condition, wind speed, temperature and humidity. In April and September, the study years showed elevated temperatures and low relative humidity. When comparing the average daily water consumption at irrigated areas at the top and at the base of the slope, it is seen that in all the months of vegetation it is more on the upper section by an average of 12%. Bioclimatic coefficients depend on humidity and air temperature. The zonal coefficients we have obtained allow us to determine the water consumption of crops, both in each growing season and in general for vegetation.

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