Vegetation temperature condition index and its application for drought monitoring

An index called vegetation temperature condition index (VTCI) was developed for drought monitoring in this study. The index can be used to monitor drought occurrences at a regional level for a special period (e.g. 10 days) of a year, and can be also used to study the spatial distribution of drought within the region. VTCI is not only related to NDVI changes in the region, but also related to land surface temperature changes of pixels with the same NDVI value. A pilot study was carried out for drought monitoring in the Guanzhong Plain area of the Loess Plateau in the Northwest China. The results showed that VTCI had better performances in classifying the relative drought occurrence levels and in studying the distribution of drought occurrences.