Advances and application analysis of drought monitoringusing remote sensing
Remote sensing technology with the characteristics of rapid, economical and macroscopic provides an important real-time dynamic data source for drought monitoring and decision making. In this paper, monitoring methods based on remote sensing data are overviewed and classified into four kinds: soil thermal inertia methods, soil spectrum characteristic methods, evapotranspiration model methods and vegetation index methods. The monitoring principle, applicability and advances for each method are presented. Combination with the drought of Southwest China occurred in the spring of 2010, a drought remote sensing method using vegetation water indices is introduced including monitoring model, data processing and application analysis. And the monitoring results are statistical analyzed and evaluated.