A new multi-sensor integrated index for drought monitoring

Drought is one of the most expensive but least understood natural disasters. Remote sensing based integrated drought indices have the potential to describe drought conditions comprehensively, and multi-criteria combination analysis is increasingly used to support drought assessment. However, conventional multi-criteria combination methods and most existing integrated drought indices fail to adequately represent spatial variability. An index that can be widely used for drought monitoring across all climate regions would be of great value for ecosystem management. To this end, we proposed a framework for generating a new integrated drought index applicable across diverse climate regions. In this new framework, a local ordered weighted averaging (OWA) model was used to combine the Temperature Condition Index (TCI) from the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), the Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) developed using the Vegetation Index based on Universal Pattern Decomposition method (VIUPD), the Soil Moisture Condition Index (SMCI) derived from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer–Earth Observation System (AMSR-E), and the Precipitation Condition Index (PCI) derived from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). This new index, which we call the “Geographically Independent Integrated Drought Index (GIIDI),” was validated in diverse climate divisions across the continental United States. Results showed that GIIDI was better correlated with in-situ PDSI, Z-index, SPI-1, SPI-3 and SPEI-6 (overall r-value = 0.701, 0.794, 0.811, 0.733, 0.628; RMSE = 1.979, 0.810, 0.729, 1.049 and 1.071, respectively) when compared to the Microwave Integrated Drought Index (MIDI), Optimized Meteorological Drought Index (OMDI), Scaled Drought Condition Index (SDCI), PCI, TCI, SMCI, and VCI. GIIDI also performed well in most climate divisions for both short-term and long-term drought monitoring. Because of the superior performance of GIIDI across diverse temporal and spatial scales, GIIDI has considerable potential for improving our ability to monitor drought across a range of biomes and climates.