Drought Determination by Using Land Surface Temperature and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index

Today, many places of different locations on Earth especially semi-arid areas face the risk of desertification due to severe drought. However, the very basic data required for the analysis is unavailable for the regions without a meteorological station. In this case, land surface temperature (LST) is derived from a thermal band as an alternative meteorological station’s data. In this research, Muğla, located in the eastern Mediterranean part of Turkey, was selected as the study area. By using Landsat TM data, LST&NDVI images were produced. A negative correlation, which indicated a trend for drought, was observed between LST&NDVI during a twenty six-year period. Standard precipitation index (SPI), which is a measure of drought and assessed from meteorological data, was used to verify remote sensing results. Consequently, it can be said that the negative correlation between LST&NDVI can be used as an indicator for drought as an alternative to meteorological data.