Agricultural Drought Monitoring Over Iraq Utilizing MODIS Products

Abstract

Iraq is a country that was well known for its agricultural production and fertile soil. However, agricultural drought overshadows the vegetative cover in general and cropland specifically in Iraq as it represents a creeping disaster. The arable lands in Iraq experienced increasing drought events that led to land degradation, desertification, economic losses, food insecurity, and deteriorating environment, particularly in recent years. Remote sensing dataset and techniques were employed in this chapter for drought monitoring over Iraq. Four different spectral drought indices; Vegetation Health Index (VHI), Vegetation Drought Index (VDI), Visible and Shortwave infrared Drought Index (VSDI), Temperature–Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI) were utilized, each of them is derived from MODIS dataset of Terra satellite. Agricultural drought maps were produced from 2003 to 2015 after masking the vegetation cover. The results of the current study in this chapter revealed that 2008 was the most severe drought year in the period from 2003 to 2015, whereas drought covered 37% of the vegetated lands, while years 2009, 2011, and 2012 were the less-severe drought years dominated by mild or moderate drought with an areal coverage of 44, 50, and 48.5%, respectively. The VDI was found to be the more suitable drought index for Iraq because of temperature integration in its structure, in addition to meeting the assumptions it was based on. The results also indicated the capability of remote sensing in fulfilling the need for an early warning system for agricultural drought over such a data-scarce region.