Monitoring the Drought Effects on Vegetation Changes using Satellite Imagery (Case Study: Ilam Catchment)

Drought is a natural phenomenon that has a significant impact on agriculture and also influences different aspects of people's lives in both arid and semi-arid regions. Vegetation cover is one of the living components of the ecosystem and plays an important role in many ecosystem processes that are strongly affected by climatic events such as drought. In the present study, the status of vegetation changes in relation to drought index has been investigated in the Ilam catchment (Ilam city). In this research, the 30-year precipitation of synoptic stations of Ilam, Mehran, Dehloran, Sarableh, Ivan, Darrehshahr and Abdanan were applied to calculate the standardized precipitation index (SPI). The Landsat satellite images were used to extract the standard vegetation difference index (NDVI) and also to investigate the detection of vegetation changes in the study area. Besides, the relationship between the SPI drought index and NDVI vegetation index was performed by the Pearson correlation method between raster layers of NDVI and SPI. The results of the SPI index showed that the drought in the years 2003 and 2008 occurred with more intensity than other years. Moreover, the vegetation classification map obtained from the NDVI index showed a decreased trend in the level of vegetation from 1988 to 2018 which is occurred mostly in the dense vegetation category (15959 ha in 1988 and 6492 ha in 2018). Based on the results of the present study, it is concluded that the changes in vegetation over time is directly related to the severity of drought, which should be considered by managers and decision-makers in the natural resources for vegetation management.