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干旱区地理 ›› 2019, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (1): 172-179.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000-6060.2019.01.20

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Monitoring agricultural drought in the Loess Plateau using MODIS and TRMM data

HU Peng-fei,LI Jing,WANG Dan,HUANG Kang-gang   

  • Online:2019-01-25 Published:2019-01-16

Abstract: Agricultural drought has the most significant impact on agricultural production. The drought index based on Meteorological Stations observation data cannot accurately monitor agricultural drought characteristics at regional scale. In this paper, the Scale Drought Condition Index(SDCI)is constructed by using multi-source remotely sensed data and is used to study the spatio-temporal characteristics during the agricultural land growth period (from April to October) in Loess Plateau region from 2003 to 2010. Firstly, using MODIS land cover product (MCD12Q1) to extract agricultural land in the Loess Plateau region, and then combining MODIS land surface temperature (LST) products (MOD11A2), Normalized Vegetation Index (NDVI)products (MOD13A2)and TRMM(3B43)precipitation products to construct SDCI evaluation index to monitor agricultural drought. Secondly, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) during the same period are used to verify the reliability of SDCI. Finally, the drought condition during the agricultural land growing season from 2003 to 2010 is analyzed in the Loess Plateau region. The results show that: (1) The annual average drought condition during the agricultural land growing period is in moderate drought in the Loess Plateau agricultural land, and the drought level is more serious in the northwest, but lighter in the southeast. (2) From 2003 to 2010, the inter-annual variation of drought condition in Loess Plateau region showed a slow aggravating trend, the drought condition had been continuously increased during the time period from 2003 to 2007, it had been gradually relieved in the period from 2007 to 2009, but it got aggravated again from 2009 to 2010.(3) The monthly changes of drought situation in the Loess Plateau region showed a continuous relief from April to August and a slow exacerbation from August to October. The drought degree was serious in April, moderate in May, June and October, and mild in July, August and September.(4) When the weights of VCI, TCI and PCI are 0.1, 0.4 and 0.5 respectively. Compared with the single drought monitoring index based on meteorological station data, SDCI can monitor the distribution characteristics of agricultural drought in regional scale more accurately. However, due to the limitation of spatial resolution of remotely sensed data, there are still many deficiencies of SDCI in describing the Agriculture drought. Therefore, the improvement on the spatial resolution is expected in the future study on the agriculture drought.

Key words: Agricultural drought, The Loess Plateau, MODIS, TRMM