1. Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China；2. Guangdong Public Laboratory of Environmental Science and Technology, Guangzhou 510650, China； 3. Shandong Institute of Land Investigation and Planning, Ji’nan 250014, China；4. International Institute for Earth System Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
Drought has long been one of the most serious natural disasters having important impacts on agricultural farming in Guangdong province. Agricultural drought monitoring using remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) was examined in this paper. A practical approach was presented for agricultural drought monitoring and assessment in Guangdong province. An operational monitoring system was developed on the basis of the approach. Using the MODIS satellite data as the main input, the authors carried out a preliminary operation of the system for the year 2006 to assess drought severity in each 10-days from March to October. The results show that the drought phenomenon was not very severe in 2006 in Guangdong province. It can be seen that light drought events happened in the province in mid-May, early-July, mid-August and late-September. The monitoring results are consistent to the spatial variation of drought events observed in the province in 2006, indicating the applicability of the approach to drought monitoring.
2008, Vol. 20 
