Combination of multi-sensor remote sensing data for drought monitoring over Southwest China

Drought is one of the most frequent climate-related disasters occurring in Southwest China, where the occurrence of drought is complex because of the varied landforms, climates and vegetation types. To monitor the comprehensive information of drought from meteorological to vegetation aspects, this paper intended to propose the optimized meteorological drought index (OMDI) and the optimized vegetation drought index (OVDI) from multi-source satellite data to monitor drought in three bio-climate regions of Southwest China. The OMDI and OVDI were integrated with parameters such as precipitation, temperature, soil moisture and vegetation information, which were derived from Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer Land Surface Temperature (MODIS LST), AMSR-E Soil Moisture (AMSR-E SM), the soil moisture product of China Land Soil Moisture Assimilation System (CLSMAS), and MODIS Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (MODIS NDVI), respectively. Different sources of satellite data for one parameter were compared with in situ drought indices in order to select the best data source to derive the OMDI and OVDI. The Constrained Optimization method was adopted to determine the optimal weights of each satellite-based index generating combined drought indices. The result showed that the highest positive correlation and lowest root mean square error (RMSE) between the OMDI and 1-month standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI-1) was found in three regions of Southwest China, suggesting that the OMDI was a good index in monitoring meteorological drought; in contrast, the OVDI was best correlated to 3-month SPEI (SPEI-3), and had similar trend with soil relative water content (RWC) in temporal scale, suggesting it a potential indicator of agricultural drought. The spatial patterns of OMDI and OVDI along with the comparisons of SPEI-1 and SPEI-3 for different months in one year or one month in different years showed significantly varied drought locations and areas, demonstrating regional and seasonal fluctuations, and suggesting that drought in Southwest China should be monitored in seasonal and regional level, and more fine distinctions of seasons and regions need to be considered in the future studies of this area.     

基于温度供水干旱指数的京津冀春旱监测及时空分布分析

为提高农业干旱监测效果和精度,在对传统干旱监测模型对比分析基础上,本文提出将温度植被干旱指数(TVDI)和植被供水指数(VSWI)加权联合构建温度供水干旱指数(TSWDI)的研究思路。以京津冀2006—2012年5月份数据作为实验统计数据,以京津冀2006—2016年3—5月份春旱监测为例进行了模型实验。实验结果证实,TSWDI指数相对其他两个指数与10、20和50 cm深处的土壤水分相关性更高,能够更精准地反映农业干旱状况。TSWDI计算结果显示,京津冀干旱分布具有如下特征:从时间角度看,2006—2016年整体干旱状况逐渐缓解,特别是自2010年至今,研究区域干旱程度逐步减轻;从空间角度看,京津冀区域整体干旱面积逐步减少。     

On agricultural drought monitoring in Australia using Himawari-8 geostationary thermal infrared observations

Monitoring agricultural drought effectively and timely is important to support drought management and food security. Effective drought monitoring requires a suite of drought indices to capture the evolution process of drought. Thermal infrared signals respond rapidly to vegetation water stress, thus being regarded useful for drought monitoring at the early stage. Several temperature-based drought indices have been developed considering the role of land surface temperature (LST) in surface energy and water balance. Here, we compared the recently proposed Temperature Rise Index (TRI) with several agricultural drought indices that also use thermal infrared observations, including Temperature Condition Index (TCI), Vegetation Health Index (VHI) and satellite-derived evapotranspiration ratio anomaly (Δf_RET) for a better understanding of these thermal infrared drought indices. To do so, we developed a new method for calculating TRI directly from the top-of-atmosphere brightness temperatures in the two split-window channels (centered around ∼11 and 12 μm) rather than from LST. TRI calculated using the Himawari-8 brightness temperatures (TRI_BT) and LST retrievals (TRI_LST), along with the other LST-based indices, were calculated for the growing season (July–October) of 2015−2019 over the Australian wheatbelt. An evaluation was conducted by spatiotemporally comparing the indices with the drought indices used by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in the official drought reports: the Precipitation Condition Index (PCI) and the Soil Moisture Condition Index (SMCI). All the LST-based drought indices captured the wet conditions in 2016 and dry conditions in 2019 clearly. Ranking of Pearson correlations of the LST-based indices with regards to PCI and SMCI produced very similar results. TRI_BT and TRI_LST showed the best agreement with PCI and SMCI (r > 0.4). TCI and VHI presented lower consistency with PCI and SMCI compared with TRI_BT and TRI_LST. Δf_RET had weaker correlations than the other LST-based indices in this case study, possibly because of outliers affecting the scaling procedure. The capability of drought early warning for TRI was demonstrated by comparing with the monthly time series of the greenness index Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) in a case study of 2018 considering the relatively slow response of the greenness index to drought. TRI_BT and TRI_LST had a lead of one month in showing the changing dryness conditions compared with VCI. In addition, the LST-based indices were correlated with annual wheat yield. Compared to wheat yields, all LST-based indices had a peak correlation in September. TRI_BT and TRI_LST had strong peak and average correlations with wheat yield (r ≥ 0.8). We conclude that TRI has promise for agricultural drought early warning, and TRI_BT appears to be a good candidate for efficient operational drought early warning given the readily accessible inputs and simple calculation approach.     

Remote sensing based agricultural drought assessment in Palar basin of Tamil Nadu state,India

Agricultural drought has been a recurrent phenomenon in many parts of India. Remote sensing plays a vital role in real time monitoring of the agricultural drought conditions over large area, there by effectively supplementing the ground mechanism. Conventional drought monitoring is based on subjective data. The satellite based monitoring such as National Agricultural Drought Assessment and Monitoring System (NADAMS) is based on the crop condition, which is an integrated effect of soil, effective rainfall, weather, etc. Drought causes changes in the external appearance of vegetation, which can clearly be identified (by their changed spectral response) and judged using satellite sensors through the use of vegetation indices. These indices are functions of rate of growth of the plants and are sensitive to the changes of moisture stress in vegetation. The satellite based drought assessment methodology was developed based on relationship obtained between previous year’s Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) profiles with corresponding agricultural performance available at district/block level. Palar basin, one of the major river basins in Tamil Nadu state was selected as the study area. The basin covers 3 districts, which contain 44 blocks. Wide Image Field Sensor (WiFS) of 188m spatial resolution from Indian Remote Sensing Satellite (IRS) data was used for the analysis. Satellite based vegetation index NDVI, was generated for Samba and Navarai seasons in the years 1998 and 1999. An attempt has been made to estimate the area under paddy. It was also observed that, there was reduction in the crop area as well as vigour in the vegetation in both Samba and Navarai seasons in 1999 when compared with 1998. Drought severity maps were prepared in GIS environment giving blockwise agricultural water deficiency status.     

An empirical standardized soil moisture index for agricultural drought assessment from remotely sensed data

We propose a simple, spatially invariant and probabilistic year-round Empirical Standardized Soil Moisture Index (ESSMI) that is designed to classify soil moisture anomalies from harmonized multi-satellite surface data into categories of agricultural drought intensity. The ESSMI is computed by fitting a nonparametric empirical probability density function (ePDF) to historical time-series of soil moisture observations and then transforming it into a normal distribution with a mean of zero and standard deviation of one. Negative standard normal values indicate dry soil conditions, whereas positive values indicate wet soil conditions. Drought intensity is defined as the number of negative standard deviations between the observed soil moisture value and the respective normal climatological conditions. To evaluate the performance of the ESSMI, we fitted the ePDF to the Essential Climate Variable Soil Moisture (ECV SM) v02.0 data values collected in the period between January 1981 and December 2010 at South–Central America, and compared the root-mean-square-errors (RMSE) of residuals with those of beta and normal probability density functions (bPDF and nPDF, respectively). Goodness-of-fit results attained with time-series of ECV SM values averaged at monthly, seasonal, half-yearly and yearly timescales suggest that the ePDF provides triggers of agricultural drought onset and intensity that are more accurate and precise than the bPDF and nPDF. Furthermore, by accurately mapping the occurrence of major drought events over the last three decades, the ESSMI proved to be spatio-temporal consistent and the ECV SM data to provide a well calibrated and homogenized soil moisture climatology for the region. Maize, soybean and wheat crop yields in the region are highly correlated (r > 0.82) with cumulative ESSMI values computed during the months of critical crop growing, indicating that the nonparametric index of soil moisture anomalies can be used for agricultural drought assessment.     

Estimating fractional cover of crop,crop residue,and soil in cropland using broadband remote sensing data and machine learning

The fractional vegetation cover (FVC), crop residue cover (CRC), and bare soil (BS) are three important parameters in vegetation–soil ecosystems, and their correct and timely estimation can improve crop monitoring and environmental monitoring. The triangular space method uses one CRC index and one vegetation index to create a triangular space in which the three vertices represent pure vegetation, crop residue, and bare soil. Subsequently, the CRC, FVC, and BS of mixed remote sensing pixels can be distinguished by their spatial locations in the triangular space. However, soil moisture and crop-residue moisture (SM-CRM) significantly reduce the performance of broadband remote sensing CRC indices and can thus decrease the accuracy of the remote estimation and mapping of CRC, FVC, and BS. This study evaluated the use of broadband remote sensing, the triangular space method, and the random forest (RF) technique to estimate and map the FVC, CRC, and BS of cropland in which SM-CRM changes dramatically. A spectral dataset was obtained using: (1) from a field-based experiment with a field spectrometer; and (2) from a laboratory-based simulation that included four distinct soil types, three types of crop residue (winter-wheat, maize, and rice), one crop (winter wheat), and varying SM-CRM. We trained an RF model [designated the broadband crop-residue index from random forest (CRRF)] that can magnify spectral features of crop residue and soil by using the broadband remote sensing angle indices as input, and uses a moisture-resistant hyperspectral index as the target. The effects of moisture on crop residue and soil were minimized by using the broadband CRRF. Then, the CRRF-NDVI triangular space method was used to estimate and map CRC, FVC, and BS. Our method was validated by using both laboratory- and field-based experiments and Sentinel-2 broadband remote-sensing images. Our results indicate that the CRRF-NDVI triangular space method can reduce the effect of moisture on the broadband remote-sensing of CRC, and may also help to obtain laboratory and field CRC, FVC, and BS. Thus, the proposed method has great potential for application to croplands in which the SM-CRM content changes dramatically.     

Assessment of the EUMETSAT LSA-SAF evapotranspiration product for drought monitoring in Europe

Evapotranspiration is a key parameter for water stress assessment as it is directly related to the moisture status of the soil-vegetation system and describes the moisture transfer from the surface to the atmosphere. With the launch of the Meteosat Second Generation geostationary satellites and the setup of the Satellite Application Facilities, it became possible to operationally produce evapotranspiration data with high spatial and temporal evolution over the entire continents of Europe and Africa. In the frame of this study we present an evaluation of the potential of the evapotranspiration (ET) product from the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LSA-SAF) for drought assessment and monitoring in Europe.To assess the potential of this product, the LSA-SAF ET was used as input for the ratio of ET to reference evapotranspiration (ET₀), the latter estimated from the ECMWF interim reanalysis. In the analysis two case studies were considered corresponding to the drought episodes of spring/summer 2007 and 2011. For these case studies, the ratio ET/ET₀ was compared with meteorological drought indices (SPI, SPEI and Sc-PDSI for 2007 and SPI for 2011) as well as with the anomalies of the fraction of absorbed photosynthetic active radiation (fAPAR) derived from remote sensing data. The meteorological and remote sensing indicators were taken from the European Drought Observatory (EDO) and the CARPATCLIM climatological atlas.Results show the potential of ET/ET₀ to characterize soil moisture variability, and to give additional information to fAPAR and to precipitation distribution for drought assessment. The main limitations of the proposed ratio for drought characterization are discussed, including options to overcome them. These options include the use of filters to discriminate areas with a low percentage vegetation cover or areas that are not in their growing period and the use of evapotranspiration without water restriction (ET_wwr), obtained as output of the LSA-SAF model instead of ET₀. The ET/ET_wwr ratio was tested by comparing its accumulated values per growing period with the winter wheat yield values per country published by Eurostat. The results point to the potential of using the remote sensing based LSA-SAF evapotranspiration and the ET/ET_wwr ratio for vegetation monitoring at large scale, especially in areas where data is generally lacking.     

旱情遥感监测研究进展与应用案例分析

在大范围、长时序的旱情监测中,遥感技术以其快速、经济和大空间范围获取的特点,弥补了基于台站气象数据旱情监测的不足,为防旱和抗旱决策提供了实时、动态、宏观的辅助决策数据。本文对已有旱情遥感监测方法进行分析和整理,将其总结为基于土壤热惯量、基于土壤波谱特征、基于蒸散模型和基于植被指数的旱情监测方法,并对各类方法从监测原理、适用范围和应用进展等方面进行了阐述。在此基础之上,详细介绍一种结合了全球植被水分指数和短波角度归一化指数的优势建立的旱情遥感监测模型和方法。以2010年春季西南地区旱情为应用案例,从监测模型方法、数据处理流程和应用分析等方面,介绍一种基于植被水分指数的旱情监测方法,并对其监测结果进行统计分析与评价。     

Spatial and temporal assessment of drought in the Northern highlands of Ethiopia

With the development of global changes, researchers from all over the world increasingly pay attention to drought detection, and severe droughts that may have resulted from climate change. In this paper, spatial and temporal variability of drought is evaluated based on precipitation data and remotely sensed images. The standard precipitation index (SPI) and vegetation condition index (VCI) are used to evaluate the spatial and temporal characteristics of meteorological and vegetative drought in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia. Based on the drought critical values of SPI and VCI defining drought, the spatial and temporal extent of droughts in the study area is established. We processed 396 decadal images in order to produce the multi-temporal VCI drought maps. The results of the SPI and VCI analysis reveal that the eastern and southern zones of the study region suffered a recurrent cycle of drought over the last decade. Results further show that there is a time lag between the period of the peak VCI and precipitation values obtained from the meteorological stations across the study area. A significant agreement was observed between VCI values with the current plus last two-months of precipitation. The study demonstrates the utility of the vegetation condition index in semi-arid and arid regions.     

MODIS光谱指数在中国西南干旱监测中的应用

利用标准化降雨指数SPI比较了基于MODIS反射率数据提取的8种光谱指数(NDVI、NDWI、VARI、EVI、NDIIB6、NDIIB7、D1640和SR)对中国西南四省市(四川、重庆、云南和贵州)2000年—2012年典型干旱事件的反映。研究结果表明:(1)SPI指数能直接反映监测站点附近的干旱情况,其中3个月和6个月尺度的SPI(SPI3和SPI6)对2006年和2009年—2010年该区的特大干旱事件的监测效果较好;(2)除了D1640外,其余7种光谱指数的距平值与3个月尺度的SPI3都具有显著的相关性,其中NDIIB7、NDIIB6和VARI与SPI3的相关性较高(R0.3),在一定程度上可以表征中国西南地区的干旱状况;(3)MODIS NDIIB7距平值与3个月尺度的SPI3相关性最高(R=0.35),本文以其为例,再现了云贵高原2009年—2010年特大持续干旱事件的时空演变过程。