Dry season analysis using MODIS data for forest and agricultural area in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia

Abstract

Tropical forest together with oil palm and rubber, two of the important plantation crops in Malaysia play a huge significant role in providing biodiversity, maintaining ecosystem, maintaining carbon balance and have huge economic value for Malaysian economy. These plantations highly sensitive to long term droughts causing crops productivity decline. The study focusing on the drought effect on these plants production using remote sensing technology. Satellite images of study areas were collected by using MODIS according to study time frame of drought. The images collected were employed, pre-processed to eliminate all the interference on the satellite images and analysed to develop various vegetation indices particularly for dry characteristics namely, Normalised Difference Water Index (NDWI), Water Index (WI), Short Wavelength Infrared (SWIR) and Water Stress Index (SIWSI). Then, meteorological data such as humidity, precipitation, temperature and solar radiation of the areas analysed to categorise the time-frame of the drought. Lastly, dry season map consisting vegetation indices for the study areas constructed.