Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 9, 2025

Early Detection of Cyanobacterial Blooms and Associated Cyanotoxins using Fast Detection Strategy
Published on: February 25, 2021
Agricultural drought monitoring and early warning at the regional scale using a remote sensing-based combined index
Trupti Satapathy1, Jörg Dietrich2, Meenu Ramadas1
1School of Infrastructure, IIT Bhubaneswar, Odisha, 752050, India.
Abstract:
Early detection of agricultural drought can alert farmers and authorities, enhancing the resilience of the food sector. A framework is proposed for developing a novel regional agricultural drought index (RegCDI) by combining remotely sensed vegetation health, soil moisture and crop water stress via a transparent Shannon's entropy weighting method. The framework consists of the selection of suitable datasets based on their regional performance, the aggregation of selected drought indicators, the validation of the combined index against crop yield, and the testing of predictive capabilities. The creation and performance of RegCDI are demonstrated for the drought prone Indian state of Odisha. MODIS surface reflectance is selected for crop water stress and GLDAS-2 for assessing soil moisture deficits and vegetation health. Three selected indicators (SMCI, TCI, and SIWSI-1) are combined into RegCDI for Odisha. The performance of RegCDI is evaluated (a) against other popular drought indices and (b) by comparing with seasonal crop yields. RegCDI is used to identify drought hotspots based on drought severity, duration, and propensity over the study area. A reforecast evaluation of RegCDI (up to three months ahead) showed that the indicators based on soil moisture deficit and crop water stress could predict drought conditions up to two months ahead with no less than 80% accuracy. This demonstrated the potential of the RegCDI framework and its component indicators for early warning of drought in Odisha.
Related Concept Videos
Responses to Drought and Flooding
Adaptations that Reduce Water Loss
Key Elements for Plant Nutrition
What is Climate?
Light Acquisition

