Drought Assessment Applying Joined Meteorological and Satellite Data

The study covered the analysis of crop development during the seasons for the years of various conditions. Temperature Condition Index characterized the growth of vegetation during the season. For better assessment of crop development conditions, the TCI was taken as decaying 3-point moving average. The examination has been done to find out the delay in reaction of vegetation on lack of precipitation and increase of air temperature. The approach utilizes two indices for constructing a drought index: (1) the hydrothermal coefficient (HTC), which characterizes meteorological conditions across the study area over a long-term period; and (2) the temperature condition index (TCI) derived from Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data, which refers instantaneous land surface temperature (LST) to longterm extreme values. The spatio-temporal variations of agricultural drought have been expressed by remote sensing based drought index - DISS. The model for drought assessment based on the DISS index was applied for generating drought index maps for Poland for the 2001–2019 vegetation seasons. The performance of the index was verified through comparison of the extent of agricultural drought to the reduction in cereal and maize yield. The research has been carried out within the Project SAPOL4CROP NCBiR