Assessment of Spatiotemporal Characteristic of Droughts Using In Situ and Remote Sensing-Based Drought Indices

Drought has been identified as one of the significant complicated natural disasters exacerbated by land degradation and climate change. Hence, monitoring drought and evaluating its spatiotemporal dynamics are essential to manage regional drought conditions and protecting the natural environment. In this study, various single remote sensing-based drought indices including soil moisture condition index (SMCI), precipitation condition index (PCI), temperature condition index (TCI), and vegetation condition index (VCI) and combined RS-based drought Indices including optimized meteorological drought index (OMDI) and synthesized drought index (SDI) have been used to investigate the spatiotemporal variations of meteorological and agricultural droughts between 2000 and 2021 in Iran. The in situ drought indices, including the standardized precipitation index (SPI) and standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) series of 1, 3, 6, 12, and 24 months were utilized to verify remote sensing-based drought indices and evaluate their applicability for analyzing drought conditions. The results indicated that the correlation coefficients of the in situ drought indices with the combined drought indices are higher than the RS-based single drought indexes. Generally, single-factor drought indexes, including VCI, TCI, PCI, and SMCI, have specific characteristics. The PCI and SMCI have an acceptable correlation with the short-term SPI and SPEI and are more applicable to monitoring short-term drought conditions. Further, the TCI has better performance in monitoring long-term drought conditions in Iran. This research concluded that the central, eastern, and southeastern parts of Iran mainly were experiencing exceptional and extreme drought conditions as the worst agricultural and meteorological drought conditions observed in the years 2008 and 2021 in the region during the last 20 years. The results also showed that, in 2019 and 2020, most areas of Iran had higher OMDI and SDI values and the severity of the drought has decreased in these years. Particularly, this research provides an essential reference for reasonably choosing RS-based drought indices for monitoring meteorological and agricultural droughts from a local to global scale.