INTEGRATED SURFACE DROUGHT INDEX (ISDI) APPLICATION IN CHINA FOR DROUGHT MONITORING

We established ISDI over China, which integrated meteorological drought indices, satellite-based drought indices, biophysical data and elevation data to produce a 1-km regional drought condition map at 16-day intervals. The purpose of ISDI was to comprehensively and quantitatively characterize the drought degree and spatial distribution. ISDI has high modeling accuracy in China, a vast country of complex topography, eco-geographical region and land cover types. The ISDI results showed good performance for typical drought and flood events detection over China during 2000 to 2013. ISDI has good potential application for near real-time drought monitoring in China although there are still some work to be done to improve and evaluate its accuracy and the effectiveness.