Combination of multi-sensor remote sensing data for drought monitoring over Southwest China

Drought is one of the most frequent climate-related disasters occurring in Southwest China, where the occurrence of drought is complex because of the varied landforms, climates and vegetation types. To monitor the comprehensive information of drought from meteorological to vegetation aspects, this paper intended to propose the optimized meteorological drought index (OMDI) and the optimized vegetation drought index (OVDI) from multi-source satellite data to monitor drought in three bio-climate regions of Southwest China. The OMDI and OVDI were integrated with parameters such as precipitation, temperature, soil moisture and vegetation information, which were derived from Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer Land Surface Temperature (MODIS LST), AMSR-E Soil Moisture (AMSR-E SM), the soil moisture product of China Land Soil Moisture Assimilation System (CLSMAS), and MODIS Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (MODIS NDVI), respectively. Different sources of satellite data for one parameter were compared with in situ drought indices in order to select the best data source to derive the OMDI and OVDI. The Constrained Optimization method was adopted to determine the optimal weights of each satellite-based index generating combined drought indices. The result showed that the highest positive correlation and lowest root mean square error (RMSE) between the OMDI and 1-month standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI-1) was found in three regions of Southwest China, suggesting that the OMDI was a good index in monitoring meteorological drought; in contrast, the OVDI was best correlated to 3-month SPEI (SPEI-3), and had similar trend with soil relative water content (RWC) in temporal scale, suggesting it a potential indicator of agricultural drought. The spatial patterns of OMDI and OVDI along with the comparisons of SPEI-1 and SPEI-3 for different months in one year or one month in different years showed significantly varied drought locations and areas, demonstrating regional and seasonal fluctuations, and suggesting that drought in Southwest China should be monitored in seasonal and regional level, and more fine distinctions of seasons and regions need to be considered in the future studies of this area.