Agricultural drought analysis for Thuraiyur taluk of Tiruchirappali District using NDVI and land surface temperature data

Abstract

Drastic changes in temperature and rainwater leads to the significant impact on drought which affects agricultural growth. Agricultural drought is a term which explains about reduction in the yield of crops due to abnormalities in rainfall as well as decline in soil moisture that affects agriculture, economy, social aspect, and environment. A trivial variation in the monsoon mainly affects the yield as well as the crops significantly. With the help of remote sensing data agricultural monitoring, management and assessment is done to calculate vegetation and temperature variations. Thuraiyur taluk in Tiruchirappalli District, of Tamilnadu (India) lies in a plain region between 11° 10′ N latitude and 78° 37′ E longitude. It depends mainly on the agriculture therefore the influence of drought affects the yield and the living of humans. The current study deals with the vegetation stress in the Thuraiyur taluk of Tiruchirappalli district with the usage of the Land Surface Temperature (LST) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The Landsat data is utilized for the computation of LST and NDVI. The mixture of LST and NDVI, helps to monitor agricultural drought and also as a counsel for farmers. By computing the relationship between LST and NDVI, it is noted that they have a high negative correlation. The correlation between LST and NDVI is −0.763 for the year 2013 and −0.685 for the year 2016. The LST when interrelated with the vegetation index helps to identify the agricultural drought, as demonstrated in the current study.