Drought monitoring over Semi-Humid rain-fed winter wheat region in northwest China using remote sensing data from 1981 to 2010

Drought is a widespread climate phenomenon throughout the world, as well as one of the natural disasters that seriously impact agricultural. Losses caused by drought in China reach up to about 15 percent of the all losses caused by natural disasters every year. Therefore, to monitoring the drought real-time and effectively, to improving the level of drought monitoring and early warning capacity have important significance to defense drought effectively. Satellite remote sensing technique of drought developed rapidly and had been one of the significant methods that widely used throughout the world since 1980s. Studies have shown that remote sensing drought index, especially the Vegetation drought Index (VIs) is the most suitable one that can be used in semi-arid and semi-humid climate region. We choose semi-arid region of Longdong rain-fed agriculture area in the northwest of Gansu Province as the study area, which is the most frequency area in China that drought occurs. To estimate the drought characteristics from 1981 to 2010, monthly NDVI data, the VCI and AVI index data got from NDVI data, the Comprehensive meteorological drought Index (CI) data during this period, and soil moisture observation data in 20 cm were used. Results show that:

1. The frequency and severity of drought in Longdong region appeared a low-high-low trend from 1981 to 2010. 1980s showed a lowest value, 1990s showed a highest value and 2000s showed a falling trend in the frequency and severity.
2. AVI and VCI showed a good consistency of drought monitoring together with CI and soil moisture, but a higher volatility and lagged behind for 1 month.
3. A Winter Wheat Drought Index (WWDI) was proposed through the analyses of inter-annual NDVI data during the winter wheat growth period and it represents the drought degree in the whole growth period commendably. Thus provide an efficient index to the winter wheat disaster assessment.
4. The winter wheat drought degree in the study region from 1981 to 2010 was obtained using WWDI data. The most drought years got from WWDI data were 1995, 2000, 1992, 1996 and 1997, which displayed a very high consistency with the actual disaster situations.