Skip to content
Research Article Open access CC BY 4.0

Remote Sensing Indexes Assessment for Drought Monitoring Using Sentinel Satellite Imagery: A Case Study from Natanz County, Iran

Saravahidi, Amir Shahrokh Amini, Vahid Hatamzadeh

Asian Journal of Geographical Research · pp. 35–43 · Published 8 May 2023

10.9734/ajgr/2023/v6i1175

Abstract

In recent years, the problem of climate change and decrease in rainfall has become a big challenge in Iran, so it’s monitoring and control is very vital and necessary. In addition to the classical methods, nowadays with the progress of the space industry in the world, the use of remote sensing techniques has greatly helped to detect and monitor drought. The science of remote sensing and the use of satellite images is considered a useful and optimal tool for drought monitoring. In this project, we investigated the occurrence of drought using satellite images and remote sensing techniques. In this way, we have calculated the drought-related remote sensing indicators, including NDVI, VCI, TCI, and VHI, in the six-year period between 2015 and 2021 for Natanz county located in Isfahan province. In order to calculate the indicators, Sentinel satellite data was used, and to calculate the Standard Rainfall Index (SPI), data from the synoptic station of Natanz county was used. According to the general results obtained from the indicators, currently the drought situation in the southwestern region of this area has been increasing compared to the last five years, and in other regions we are witnessing the growth and occurrence of drought sporadically. The results of this research show that the best index for calculating and monitoring drought is the VCI index because it has a higher correlation with meteorological data and the SPI index.

Drought index satellite imagery remote sensing sentinel satellite sentinel Natanz County

References (22)

  1. 1 Sterling SM, Ducharne A, Polcher J. The impact of global land-cover change on the terrestrial water cycle. Nat. Clim. Chang. 2013;3:385–390. [DOI]
  2. 2 Rockström J, Lannerstad M, Fal Kenmark M. Assessing the water challenge of a new green revolution in developing countries.
  3. 3 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2007;104: 6253–6260. [PubMed] [DOI]
  4. 4 Henderson. Urbanization in developing countries. World Bank Res. Obs. 2002;17: 89–112. [DOI]
  5. 5 Heim RR. A review of twentieth-century drought indices used in the United States. Bull. Am. Meteor. Soc. 2002;83:1149-1166. [DOI]
  6. 6 Engdawork Asfaw K, Suryabhagavan V. Argaw M. Soil salinity modeling and mapping using remote sensing and GIS: The case of Wonji sugar cane irrigation farm, Ethiopia. Journal of the Saudi Society of Agricultural Sciences. 2018;17 (3):250-258. [DOI]
  7. 7 Sepulcre-Canto G, Horion S, Singleton A, Carrao H, Vogt J. Development of a combined drought indicator to detect agricultural drought in Europe. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 2012;12:3519–3531. [DOI]
  8. 8 Trnka M, Hlavinka P, Mozny M, Semeradova D, Stepanek P, Balek J, Bartosova L, Zahradnicek P, Blahova M, Skalak P, et al. Czech drought monitor system for monitoring and forecasting agricultural drought and drought impacts. Int. J. Climatol. 2020;40:5941–5958 [DOI]
  9. 9 Karnieli A, Ohana-Levi N, Silver M, Paz-Kagan T, Panov N, Varghese D, Chrysoulakis N, Provenzale A. Spatial and seasonal patterns in vegetation growth limiting factors over Europe. Remote Sens. 2019;11:2406. [DOI]
  10. 10 Rezaei Moghadam M, Valizade K, Modis data performance analysis in drought estimation. Journal of Geography and Environmental Stability. 1991;4:97-54.
  11. 11 Ziyu Wang, Zegen Wang, Junnan Xiong, Wen He, Zhiwei Yong, Xin Wang. Responses of the remote sensing drought index with soil information to meteorological and agricultural droughts in Southeastern Tibet Article in Remote Sensing; 2022. DOI: 10.3390/rs14236125 [DOI]
  12. 12 Vahidi S, Hatamzadeh V, Nouri P, Far AA. Monitoring land cover changes in Tehran city over 5 years (2018 to 2022) using remote sensing based spatial information. Asian Journal of Environment & Ecology. 2023;20(3):24–35. Available:https://doi.org/10.9734/ajee/2023/v20i3440 [DOI]
  13. 13 Afshinfar Afshin, Vahidi Sara, Hatamzadeh Vahid, Nouri Paniz, RS-Based Assessment: Spatial-temporal changes in water Basins of Tar and Havir Lakes. International Journal of Environment and Climate Change. 2023;13(5):159-178. DOI: 10.9734/ijecc/2023/v13i51757 [DOI]
  14. 14 Alavi Panah, et al. Application of remote sensing in earth science (soil science). Tehran University Press; 2013.
  15. 15 Rezaie B, Rezaie M, Freydonpoor A. Agricultural drought analysis in Eastern Azarbayjan province with remote sensing approach and vegetation condition index , Water and Soil Journal. 1991;52:119-149.
  16. 16 Mckee TB, Doesken NJ, Kleist J. The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. In Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Applied Climatology, Anaheim, CA, USA. 1993;17: 179–183.
  17. 17 Bhuiyan C, Singh RP, Kogan FN. Monitoring drought dynamics in the Aravalli region (India) using different indices based on ground and remote sensing data. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation. 2006: 289-302 [DOI]
  18. 18 Hatamzadeh Vahid, Vahidi Sara, Karimi Shokoufeh, Afshinfar Afshin ,Nouri Paniz, Monitoring land changes using remote sensing methods and spatial information system in the area of Kahrizak Waste Disposal Center. Journal of Engineering Research and Repports; 2023. [DOI]
  19. 19 Dilayda Soylu Pekpostalci, Rifat Tur, Ali Danandeh Mehr, Mohammad Amin Vazifekhah Ghaffari, Dominika D Abrowska, Vahid Nourani. Drought monitoring and forecasting across Turkey: A contemporary review. Article in Sustainability; 2023. DOI:10.3390/su15076080 Available:http://zistnatanz.blogfa.com [DOI]
  20. 20 Sentinel User Handbook, ESA Standard Document. 2015;2(1).
  21. 21 Afshar MH, Al-Yaari A, Yilmaz MT. Comparative evaluation of microwave lband VOD and optical NDVI for agriculture drought detection over Central Europe. Remote Sens. 2021;13:1251. [DOI]
  22. 22 Bachmair S, Tanguy M, Hannaford J, Stahl K. How well do meteorological indicators represent agricultural and forest drought across Europe? Environ. Res. Lett. 2018;13:34042. Available://www.wikipedia.org [DOI]

Cited by 3

The Problems and Challenges of Rural Master Plans (RMPs) in Iran

Mohsen Bakhshi, Mohammad Sadegh Ebrahimi · Asia-Pacific Journal of Rural Development · 2025

Integrating remote sensing and meteorological analysis for monitoring drought conditions in arid regions: a case study from Sistan and Baluchestan province, Iran

Hadi Siasar, Amir Salari, Mehdi Bahrami · Theoretical and Applied Climatology · 2025

Showing 2 of 3 known citations — external sources report more than can currently be individually listed.

Related research

Article metrics

Real usage data collected on this platform.

0

Page views

0

PDF downloads

0

Outbound clicks

3

Citations

Views by country

Approximate, from request IP at view time — not citizenship or institution. Countries with fewer than 5 views are grouped as "Other".

No views recorded yet.

Traffic sources

Referring site, by host.

No traffic recorded yet.

Views and downloads exclude known bots/crawlers. Citations combines this platform's own DOI-resolved index with each external source's own reported total — see Cited by above for individually listed citing works. Last refreshed 0 seconds ago.