Study of Vegetation Status and Determination of Drought Intensity through Vegetation Indices Using Satellite Images

Knowledge of the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of changes in environmental planning, land- use planning and sustainable development is of great importance and today, the use of vegetation maps is one of the key pillars in information production for macro and micro- planning, and vegetation considered as one of the most important components of any ecosystem. Determining the percentage of vegetation in order to understand the interactions between the Earth and the atmosphere, its effect on climate, soil erosion, drought surveying, and natural resource management is essential. Since most of the methods proposed to assess drought conditions so far estimate drought indices based on stationary data at one point, researchers were looking for a way to better achieve regional estimates in order to better manage the damage caused by this gradual phenomenon. Therefore, in this research, remote sensing and Landsat 8 satellite imagery techniques and Infrared Percentage Vegetation (IPVI), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Weighted Difference Vegetation Index (WDVI), Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), Optimized Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (OSAVI) and Modified Soil Adjusted Index (MSAVI) were used to calculate the percentage of vegetation and the Modified Perpendicular Drought Index (MPDI) was used to estimate regional drought. After preparing the drought map, the areas which were in mild, moderate and severe drought in terms of severity, were well classified.