Remote sensing of agricultural drought monitoring: A state of art review

Abstract

Agricultural drought is a natural hazard that can be characterized by shortage of water supply. In the scope of this paper, we synthesized the importance of agricultural drought and methods commonly employed to monitor agricultural drought conditions. These include: (i) in-situ based methods, (ii) optical remote sensing methods, (iii) thermal remote sensing methods, (iv) microwave remote sensing methods, (v) combined remote sensing methods, and (vi) synergy between in-situ and remote sensing based methods. The in-situ indices can provide accurate results at the point of measurements; however, unable to provide spatial dynamics over large area. This can potentially be addressed by using remote sensing based methods because remote sensing platforms have the ability to view large area at a near continuous fashion. The remote sensing derived agricultural drought related indicators primarily depend on the characteristics of reflected/emitted energy from the earth surface, thus the results can be relatively less accurate in comparison to the in-situ derived outcomes. Despite a significant amount of research and development has been accomplished in particular to the area of remote sensing of agricultural drought, still there are several challenges. Those include: monitoring relatively small area, filling gaps in the data, developing consistent historical dataset, developing remote sensing-based agricultural drought forecasting system, integrating the recently launched and upcoming remote sensors, and developing standard validation schema, among others.

Keywords

• optical remote sensing
• thermal remote sensing
• microwave remote sensing
• synergy between in-situ and remote sensing