A new Soil Moisture Agricultural Drought Index (SMADI) integrating MODIS and SMOS products: A case of study over the Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

A new index for agricultural drought monitoring is presented based on the integration of different soil/vegetation remote sensing observations. The synergistic fusion of the surface soil moisture (SSM) from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) derived land surface temperature (LST), and water/vegetation indices for agricultural drought monitoring was tested. The rationale of the approach is based on the inverse relationship between LST, vegetation condition and soil moisture content. Thus, the proposed Soil Moisture Agricultural Drought Index (SMADI) combines the soil and temperature conditions while including the lagged response of vegetation. SMADI was retrieved every eight days at 500 m spatial resolution for the whole Iberian Peninsula (IP) from 2010 to 2014, and a time lag of eight days was used to account for the plant response to the varying soil/climatic conditions. The results of SMADI compared well with other agricultural indices in a semiarid area in the Duero basin, in Spain, and also with a climatic index in areas of the Iberian Peninsula under contrasted climatic conditions. Based on a standard classification of drought severity, the proposed index allowed for a coherent description of the drought conditions of the IP during the study period.