Abstract
Various drought indices have been used for agricultural drought monitoring, such as Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), Soil Water Deficit Index (SWDI), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Vegetation Health Index (VHI), Vegetation Drought Response Index (VegDRI), and Scaled Drought Condition Index (SDCI). They incorporate such factors as rainfall, land surface temperature (LST), potential evapotranspiration (PET), soil moisture content (SM), and vegetation index to express the meteorological and agricultural aspects of drought. However, these five factors should be combined more comprehensively and reasonably to explain better the dryness/wetness of land surface and the association with crop yield. This study aims to develop the Integrated Crop Drought Index (ICDI) by combining the weather factors (rainfall and LST), hydrological factors (PET and SM), and a vegetation factor (enhanced vegetation index (EVI)) to better express the wet/dry state of land surface and healthy/unhealthy state of vegetation together. The study area was the State of Illinois, a key region of the U.S. Corn Belt, and the quantification and analysis of the droughts were conducted on a county scale for 2004–2019. The performance of the ICDI was evaluated through the comparisons with SDCI and VegDRI, which are the representative drought index in terms of the composite of the dryness and vegetation elements. The ICDI properly expressed both the dry and wet trend of the land surface and described the state of the agricultural drought accompanied by yield damage. The ICDI had higher positive correlations with the corn yields than SDCI and VegDRI during the crucial growth period from June to August for 2004–2019, which means that the ICDI could reflect the agricultural drought well in terms of the dryness/wetness of land surface and the association with crop yield. Future work should examine the other factors for ICDI, such as locality, crop type, and the anthropogenic impacts, on drought. It is expected that the ICDI can be a viable option for agricultural drought monitoring and yield management.
Highlights
IntroductionThe frequency and severity of drought have been increasing due to climate change, accompanied by the threat to ecosystems and human societies [1,2,3,4]
We proposed the Integrated Crop Drought Index (ICDI), which can appropriately represent agricultural drought by combining the weather factors, hydrological factors
The time-series changes of ICDI, ICDI’s components, and yield anomalies were analyzed for Illinois from 2004 to 2019, and the relationships with corn yields were investigated
Summary
The frequency and severity of drought have been increasing due to climate change, accompanied by the threat to ecosystems and human societies [1,2,3,4]. Drought is difficult to categorize in a formulaic manner because its beginning and end are difficult to determine accurately; it occurs broadly over a long period [6,7]. It is generally classified into meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, and Remote Sens.
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