Monitoring drought pattern for pre- and post-monsoon seasons in a semi-arid region of western part of India.

Abstract

Drought has become a regular phenomenon in the western semi-arid regions of India, where severe drought occurs once in 8-9years. Therefore, two drought indices, namely temperature condition index (TCI) and vegetation condition index (VCI), were prepared from using Landsat datasets to appraise and monitor of drought pattern for the pre- and post-monsoon seasons between 1996 and 2016 in the Latur district, the north-western part of India. Additionally, the average frequency layers (AFL) of all drought and land use indices were prepared to analyse the correlation between them. The results show a substantial increase in the area under high, very high and severe drought classes both pre- and post-monsoon seasons during the study period. The highest increase was noticed from the high drought class from 2532.45 to 4792.49 sq. km and 1559.84 to 3342.32 sq. km for pre- and post-monsoon season, respectively, based on the TCI and 1269.81 to 1787.77 sq. km in very high drought class for the post-monsoon season using the VCI. The correlation analysis showed that there exists a significant relationship between the land use indices and drought indices. However, the spatial pattern of correlation was heterogeneous for both pre- and post-monsoon seasons. The results of this research can help in the drought management and mitigation planning in the study area. In addition, a similar approach may be applied to analyse drought patterns in other places with similar geographic characteristics as both VCI and TCI are cost-effective and less time-consuming methods and produce reliable outcomes.