Remote Sensing of Drought: Vegetation, Soil Moisture, and Data Assimilation

Application of remote sensing is emerging for operational drought monitoring and early warning as it offers opportunities for assessing drought from different perspectives. This chapter provides an overview of the advances in monitoring different types of drought using satellite remote-sensing observations with an example on agricultural drought assessment over the continental U.S. While the main constraint in remote sensing of drought is attributed to limited duration of records, this can be overcome by merging the remote-sensing observations with model simulations through data assimilation. The application of data assimilation as a promising approach is described for drought monitoring over the Pacific Northwest US.

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