Integration of Microwave and Optical/Infrared Derived Datasets for a Drought Hazard Inventory in a Sub-Tropical Region of India

Drought is an intricate phenomenon assessed by analyzing several hydro-meteorological factors such as rainfall, soil moisture, temperature, evapotranspiration, vegetation cover, etc. For effective drought hazard management and preparedness, the monitoring of drought requires the evaluation of influencing factors via the Drought Hazard Inventory (DHI). The main objective of this study is to compare spatial occurrences of drought hazard with the help of microwave and Optical/Infrared datasets obtained from multiple satellites. The long-term climatology of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Rainfall, Climate Change Initiative soil moisture (CCI-SM) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) derived Land Surface Temperature (LST), Evapotranspiration (ET) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) were used in this study for drought hazard assessment. This study was carried out in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, considered as one of the most frequent and dominant drought-prone areas of India. The current study includes the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique based on Multi-Criteria Decision Making Analysis (MCDM) for weighting assignment and decision making, while the geospatial platform was used for data layer standardization, integration, and drought assessment. The results indicate that a large percentage of area (38.05% and 27.54%, respectively) lying in the central part of Bundelkhand region is under high to extreme drought conditions, where precautionary measures are needed. To demonstrate the robustness of our results, we compare them with the long-term in-situ ground water depletion as a proxy. Finally, based on the findings of this study, we recommend the methodology for drought assessment at a larger scale, as well as in the remote areas where ground based measurements are limited.