Assessment of Drought Events in Southwest China in 2009/2010 Using Sun-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence

Abstract

With the increasing trend of global warming, drought events frequently occur, which have an impact on human life and the environment. In this study, an extreme drought event in Southwest China in 2009/2010 was used as an example to explore the potential of using satellite observations of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) for drought monitoring. The results indicated that the SIF observations show more proper responses to drought than EVI, which underestimated the losses by approximately 50%. The SIF reduction in this drought event (19% in March 2010 and 11% in May 2010) was more obvious than that of the enhanced vegetation index (EVI) (4% and 5%). The drought severity index (DSI) overestimates the drought during most dry months. SIF can be a reliable tool for monitoring drought in a timely and accurate manner. In addition, the significant correlation coefficient with SIF and ET (reaching 0.8 at the beginning and end of the drought stage), indicates the ability of SIF to reveal the interaction of carbon and water during drought, which provides us with ideas for future research on the terrestrial carbon–water cycle.