AGRICULTURAL DROUGHT ASSESSMENT OF POST MONSOON SEASON OF VAIJAPUR TALUKA USING LANDSAT 8

Abstract

Drought is least understood natural phenomena and it has a direct impact on livelihood. The government bodies spend time and money for drought survey, but this process is a time consuming and challenging. Advantage of Geospatial Technology is that, it is helpful to understand the drought prone area and its severity level through satellite images. This research study was focused on Vaijapur taluka which is located at latitude of 19°40' to 20°15' north and longitude of 74°35' to 75°00' which comes under the scanty rainfall region. The annual rainfall of the region is 502.6mm which is below than an average of 750mm, so that it leads to the agriculture drought. In this study, Landsat 8 images of the year 2013 and 2014 were used for drought assessment in the post monsoon season. Landsat 8 has Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) on board which provides 11 band data of the earth surface. The post monsoon season starts from October to December in India so that we have compared drought indices of two years. To do so OLI and TIRS images of Landsat 8 for the year 2013 and 2014 and ancillary data such as rainfall, temperature, sown area statistics have been used. The analysis of vegetation cover using NDVI, VCI, and SAVI indices demonstrate the impact of the post monsoon rainfall on agriculture field. According to the research study year 2013 was affected by agricultural drought.