Assessment of agricultural drought in paddy field area using Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) in Sukaresmi District, Cianjur Regency

Abstract

Drought is a phenomenon which happens in spatial and temporal scale. One of the sectors affected is agriculture. In August 2015, a severe drought happened in Sukaresmi Village of Sukaresmi District causing harvest failures. This study aims to analyze the distribution of agricultural drought level of severeness in Sukaresmi District during August 2013 until August 2017 from spatial and temporal aspect by using VCI (Vegetation Condition Index) method and finding the correlation between the drought extent and rainfall data as the expected cause. The monitoring of agricultural drought in this study was carried out by utilizing remote sensing derived VCI by Kogan (1995). This index obtained after the NDVI value of Landsat 8 imageries in the given period normalized for each pixel. VCI shows how close the vegetation condition compared to its best and worst condition within the period. The result shows an agricultural drought in Sukaresmi District occurred throughout the years. 2015 was the year with the greatest average extent of agricultural drought. There is also a negative and weak (r = -0.212) correlation between the extent of drought and rainfall variable which means the climate did not mainly cause the phenomenon.