Publication

Abstract : Drought is a natural hazard due to adverse climatic changes which affects various sectors like environment, society and economy. It occurs not only because of the scarcity of rainfall but also due to the inefficient water resource management. Studies indicate that over 30% of the entire land surface of earth is affected by drought. As a developing country, majority of Indian population depends directly or indirectly on agriculture. So the abnormal monsoon precipitation, causing loss of agricultural production, can highly influence the human life. In this paper, Karur district in Tamil Nadu which often has a very low annual rainfall is taken as the study area for drought monitoring. The technological evolution in remote sensing over the past few decades has opened a new era in the field of drought monitoring. Thus, use of remote sensing and GIS helps in developing early warnings about drought conditions which will be useful for planning the strategies for relief work. Drought analysis can be performed by calculating different drought indices like Standard Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Water Level Index (SWI) and Normalized Differences Vegetation Index (NDVI). Rainfall data from 2000-2009 is used to compute the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) in different time scales which is used in meteorological drought monitoring. Standardized Water Level Index (SWI) obtained from ground water level data is used for the hydrological drought analysis. Agricultural drought can be qualified using Normalized Differences Vegetation Index (NDVI) which is calculated from the satellite data.