Drought monitoring over India through normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)

Abstract

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is a simple index to monitor the state of vegetation (stressed/unstressed) which can be derived from satellite data. Hence an attempt is made to find out the vegetation responses to rainfall through NDVI over the study area. Applicability of NDVI in drought monitoring is discussed using the NDVI and rainfall data for the period 1982-2003. The anomaly of NDVI is compared with the percentage departure of rainfall of corresponding years. Results showed a significant relation between the NDVI with the percentage departure of rainfall. The time series plots of averaged NDVI and seasonal rainfall (June-September) are done for NW India (21° N - 31° N, 68° E - 78° E), Central India (22° N - 27° N, 70° E - 77° E) and Peninsular India (16° N - 21° N, 74° E - 79° E) over the period 1982-2003 to analyze changes in vegetation pattern of India during the last two decades. Results indicated a clear linear relationship over NW and Central India. NDVI anomalies and the corresponding cumulative rainfall showed significantly linear correlation of 0.69 over NW India and 0.57 over Central India significant at 1% level but the correlation is found to be insignificant over Peninsular India which was only 0.04. Trend analysis of averaged NDVI over India showed that during last two decades the vegetation status had quite improved over the dry farming tracts of India.