sajjad ebrahimzadeh; javad bazrafshan
Abstract
Drought can affects by reduced water resources, agricultural productivity, change in vegetation cover, and accelerate the desertification of areas. In order to drought monitoring, we need to quantify drought effects by using drought indices. These indices based on type of available data are divided ...
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Drought can affects by reduced water resources, agricultural productivity, change in vegetation cover, and accelerate the desertification of areas. In order to drought monitoring, we need to quantify drought effects by using drought indices. These indices based on type of available data are divided into two general categories of ground- and satellite- based indices. The aim of this study was to compare the capability of detection and classification of vegetation changes occurred due to the drought, between one ground-based drought index (Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI)) and four satellite drought indices derived from AVHRR-NOAA (normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), temperature condition index (TCI), ratio vegetation index (RVI), standardized vegetation index (SVI) in the Kermanshah province. To do this, the change vector (CV) analysis was used as one of the important change detection algorithms. In this method, the change occurred in vegetation has been shown by two components, change magnitude and change direction. The results of implementation of the CVA on the maps of drought indices during the growing season (March to August) in selected years (two normal years, one wet year, and one drought year) showed the best response to the drought in the study years (except the wet year 1992), obtained by SVI. The lowest similarity was obtained between the SPI and TCI, for wet and normal years. Finally, the study suggests mostly the satellite indices based on the vegetation conditions, rather than the temperature indices, for assessing the effect of drought on vegetation cover.
