{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,28]],"date-time":"2026-01-28T07:30:45Z","timestamp":1769585445422,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":19,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"8","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2008,8,8]],"date-time":"2008-08-08T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1218153600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>A practical approach was developed in the study for drought monitoring in Guangdong province of China on the basis of vegetation supply water index (VSWI) and precipitation distance index (PDI). A comprehensive index for assessment of agro-drought severity (SADI) was then established from the normalized VSWI and PDI. Using MODIS satellite images and precipitation data from ground-observed meteorological stations, we applied the approach to Guangdong for drought monitoring in 2006. The monitoring results showed that the drought severity on average was very low in the province during the main growing season from May to September in 2006. However, seasonal variation of the severity was also obvious in difference counties of the province. Higher severity of drought could be seen in the periods of late-June (In China each month is traditionally divided into 3 periods. Each is with 10 days and has different names. This division system is mainly with consideration of farming seasons hence has been widely used as the basis of drought monitoring periods in China. In order to keep this tradition, we define, for example, for June, the early-June as the period from 1st to 10th of June, the mid-June as the period from 11th to 20th, and the late-June as the period from 21st to 30th. So mid-August denotes the period from 11th to 20th of August, and early-July the period from 1st to 10th of July, and so on.), early-July, mid-August and late-September. Regionally, Leizhou Peninsula in the west had the most serious drought before mid-May. Validation indicated that our monitoring results were generally consistent with the drought statistics data and the results from Chinese National Satellite Meteorological Center (CNSMC), which used only remote sensing data. This consistence confirmed the applicability of our approach for drought monitoring. Our better identification of drought severity in Leizhou Peninsula of western Guangdong than that of CNSMC might suggest that the approach developed in the study was able to provide a better alternative to increase the accuracy of drought monitoring for agricultural administration and farming.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s8084687","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2008,8,28]],"date-time":"2008-08-28T10:34:09Z","timestamp":1219919649000},"page":"4687-4708","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":43,"title":["Remote Sensing of Agro-droughts in Guangdong Province of China Using MODIS Satellite Data"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"8","author":[{"given":"Maofang","family":"Gao","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Zhihao","family":"Qin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China"},{"name":"Guangdong Public Laboratory of Environmental Science and Technology, Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Guangzhou 510650, China"},{"name":"International Institute for Earth System Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Hong\u2019ou","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Guangdong Public Laboratory of Environmental Science and Technology, Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Guangzhou 510650, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Liping","family":"Lu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"International Institute for Earth System Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Xia","family":"Zhou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Guangdong Public Laboratory of Environmental Science and Technology, Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Guangzhou 510650, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Xiuchun","family":"Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2008,8,8]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"130","DOI":"10.1097\/00010694-196508000-00009","article-title":"Reflection of radiant energy from soil","volume":"100","author":"Bowers","year":"1965","journal-title":"Soil Science"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"978","DOI":"10.2136\/sssaj1972.03615995003600060045x","article-title":"Spectrophotometric determination of soil water content","volume":"36","author":"Bowers","year":"1972","journal-title":"Soil Science Society of America Proceeding"},{"key":"ref_3","first-page":"2017","article-title":"Application of thermal modeling in the geologic interpretation of IR images","volume":"3","author":"Watson","year":"1971","journal-title":"Remote Sensing of Environment"},{"key":"ref_4","first-page":"147","article-title":"Thermal inertia mapping from satellites discrimination of geologic units in Oman","volume":"2","author":"Watson","year":"1974","journal-title":"Journal of Research of U. S. Geological Survey"},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"151","DOI":"10.1016\/0034-4257(79)90014-2","article-title":"The thermal inertia approach to mapping of soil moisture and geology","volume":"8","author":"Pratt","year":"1979","journal-title":"Remote Sensing of Environment"},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"59","DOI":"10.1016\/0034-4257(85)90038-0","article-title":"On the analysis of thermal infrared imagery, the limited utility of apparent thermal inertia","volume":"18","author":"Price","year":"1985","journal-title":"Remote Sensing of Environment"},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3044","DOI":"10.1029\/JC080i021p03044","article-title":"The utility of surface temperature measurements for remote sensing of soil water studies","volume":"80","author":"Idso","year":"1975","journal-title":"Journal of Geophysical Research"},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"45","DOI":"10.1016\/0002-1571(81)90032-7","article-title":"Normalizing the stress degree of water for environmental variability","volume":"24","author":"Idso","year":"1981","journal-title":"Agricultural and Forest Meteorology"},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1133","DOI":"10.1029\/WR017i004p01133","article-title":"Canopy temperature as a crop water stress indicator","volume":"17","author":"Jackson","year":"1981","journal-title":"Water Resource Research"},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1405","DOI":"10.1080\/01431169008955102","article-title":"Remote sensing of weather impacts on vegetation in non-homogeneous areas","volume":"11","author":"Kogan","year":"1990","journal-title":"International Journal of Remote Sensing"},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"213","DOI":"10.1016\/S0034-4257(01)00274-7","article-title":"A simple interpretation of the surface temperature\/vegetation index space for assessment of surface moisture status","volume":"79","author":"Sandholt","year":"2002","journal-title":"Remote Sensing of Environment"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"45","DOI":"10.1016\/0168-1923(90)90100-K","article-title":"Remote sensing estimation of soil moisture availability and fractional vegetation cover for agricultural fields","volume":"52","author":"Carlson","year":"1990","journal-title":"Agricultural and Forest Meteorology"},{"key":"ref_13","first-page":"161","article-title":"A method to make use of thermal infrared temperature and NDVI measurement to infer surface soil water content and fractional vegetation cover","volume":"9","author":"Carlson","year":"1994","journal-title":"Remote Sensing Environment"},{"key":"ref_14","unstructured":"NASA (2003). MODIS Level 1B Product User's Guide, For Level 1B Version 4.3.0 (Terra) and Version 4.3.1 (Aqua), Prepared by Members of the MODIS Characterization Support Team For NASA\/Goddard Space Flight Center."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"22655","DOI":"10.1029\/2000JD900452","article-title":"Derivation of split window algorithm and its sensitivity analysis for retrieving land surface temperature from NOAA-advanced very high resolution radiometer data","volume":"106","author":"Qin","year":"2001","journal-title":"Journal of Geophysical Research"},{"key":"ref_16","first-page":"64","article-title":"Methodology to retrieve land surface temperature from MODIS data for agricultural drought monitoring in China","volume":"14","author":"Qin","year":"2005","journal-title":"Journal of Natural Disasters"},{"key":"ref_17","unstructured":"Qin, Z., Gao, M., and Qin, X. (2005). An improved approach for agro-drought monitoring in China: Research project report to China Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. (in Chinese)."},{"key":"ref_18","unstructured":"China Ministry of Agricultural (MOA) (2007). Chinese Agricultural Statistics 2006, China Agricultural Press."},{"key":"ref_19","unstructured":"http:\/\/dear.cma.gov.cn\/is_nsmc\/info_service\/drought\/droughtindex.aspx"}],"container-title":["Sensors"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/8\/8\/4687\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T22:20:49Z","timestamp":1760221249000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/8\/8\/4687"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2008,8,8]]},"references-count":19,"journal-issue":{"issue":"8","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2008,8]]}},"alternative-id":["s8084687"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/s8084687","relation":{},"ISSN":["1424-8220"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1424-8220","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2008,8,8]]}}}