Designing of the perpendicular drought index

In this paper, a simple, effective drought monitoring method is developed using two dimensional spectral space obtained from reflectance of near-infrared (NIR) and Red wavelengths. First, NIR-Red reflectance space is established using atmospheric and geometric corrected ETM+ data, which is manifested by a triangle shape and in which different surface targets possess certain spatial distribution rules. Second, perpendicular drought index (PDI) is developed on the basis of spatial characteristics of moisture distribution in NIR-Red space, as well as the relationships between PDI and soil moisture is examined. Validation work includes: comparison of PDI with in-situ drought index obtained from field measured data in the study area which includes bulk soil moisture content at different soil depths, field moisture capacity and wilting coefficient, etc.; and comparison of PDI with other recognized drought monitoring methods such as LST/NDVI and vegetation temperature condition index (VTCI). It is evident from the results that graph of PDI of field measured plots demonstrates very similar trends with ground truth drought data, LST/NDVI and VTCI. PDI is highly correlated with in-situ drought values calculated from 0 to 20 cm mean soil moisture with correlation coefficients of R-2 = 0.49 (r = 0.75). This paper concludes that PDI has a potential in remote estimation of drought phenomenon as a simple, effective drought monitoring index.