Techniques on Monitoring Drought Conditions
Presentation Time: Tue, 05/02/2023 - 13:30
Keywords: NDVI, NDMI, DEM, change detection, drought
Central Valley, California is one of the largest producers of agricultural products in the United States; however, with its on-going drought conditions, farmers have had difficulty maintaining yields with a sparse water supply. California has always gone through cyclic droughts, and with remote sensing, these droughts can be investigated to see how it impacts the California agribusiness. This project investigates techniques to analyze drought conditions in the agricultural regions of Central Valley by utilizing imagery analysis through USGS Earth Explorer and manipulating the data in ArcGIS Pro. The project explores the digital elevation model, as well as methods including indices such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index and Normalized Difference Moisture Index to see how well these procedures accurately depict drought conditions in the Central Valley. Digital elevation models and indices are calculated by plugging formulas into the raster calculator function to highlight areas that have either been affected by or changed due to the drought. The results show how effective the digital elevation model is for detecting changes in elevation over the 7-year period, and if the normalized difference indices helped with identifying areas where agriculture suffered the most.
