Remote Sensing And Gis Based Drought Vulnerability Assessment A Case Of Afar Regional State Ethiopia

Ethiopia is one of the sub-Saharan countries and highly prone to drought hazards. Drought isrnwater related natural disaster, which affects a wide range of environmental factors. It isrnmainly a climatic phenomenon that cannot be eradicated. In 2015, there was short, poor andrndelayed rainfall which caused critical water shortage, livestock death, and decline in milkrnproduction mainly in the pastoral regions of Ethiopia. The present study attempted torninvestigate the effectiveness of Remote Sensing based drought indices as an indicator forrndrought assessment in arid and semi-arid areas, examined the relation between rainfall andrnvegetation indices of drought and identified the most drought–vulnerable areas using RemoternSensing (RS) and GIS in the Afar Regional State of Ethiopia, which is a drought-prone area.rnIn this study, 11 years’ time series of decadal SPOT (2005 2013) and PROVA-Vrn(2014 2015) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and rainfall data were used.rnVegetation indices; Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) and Drought Severity Index (DSI)rnderived from SPOT and PROVA-V used for the study. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI)rnwas calculated. For the validation of drought indices, correlation and regression analysisrnbetween NDVI and rainfall (r = 75%), NDVI and crop yield, VCI and rainfall (r = 90%) wererndone. Results of this study showed that there was extreme drought in the Region in 2005,rn2009, 2011 and 2015. The findings indicated that the study area is highly prone to droughtrneven if its severity level varied. The result map obtained by integrating NDVI, VCI, DSI andrnSPI, showed that about 2% of the region is extremely, 32% is severe, 59% is moderate andrn6% is mild vulnerable to drought. For the future, besides delineating drought vulnerable areasrnimportance of vulnerability assessment could be made more meaningful, if detail study ofrnthese areas in terms of water availability, temperature conditions and crops grown. As well asrnremedial actions could be implemented before the occurrence of the drought and timelyrnupdated information about the prevalence of drought is important.rnKeywords: Drought Vulnerability, SPOT, Remote Sensing, Drought Indices

Get Full Work

Report copyright infringement or plagiarism