Abstract

Drought is a severe problem in Afghanistan, where more than 80% of the population relies directly or indirectly on agriculture and the livestock sector. Although the drought indices derived from remote sensing data have been used to monitor meteorological or agricultural drought, there are no indices that can suitably reflect the comprehensive information of drought from meteorological to agricultural aspects. The main objective of this study was to assess the vegetation condition of Afghanistan in terms of time and space scales. Our method is based on the use of data from the AVHRR Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from 1982 to 2015 and temperature and precipitation data from Modern Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (NASA’s MERRA). The NDVI is the most helpful for characterizing the drought conditions in Afghanistan because of the low vegetation and severe drought. The seasonal values of TCI, NDVI, VCI, VHI, and PCI confirmed that Afghanistan suffered from severe drought in 1989, 2002, and 2007 and led the durations of severe drought. Spatial correlation is generated between NDVI, VCI, VHI, PCI, and TCI. The correlation between TCI and NDVI, VHI and NDVI showed a significantly negative correlation, while there was a significantly positive correlation between VHI and TCI, VHI and VCI, and TCI and PCI, which showed a good indication for the assessment of drought, especially for the agricultural regions of Afghanistan. It was confirmed that these indexes are a comprehensive drought monitoring indicator and a step toward monitoring climate change in Afghanistan, which will play a vital role in conducting studies on vegetation types, monitoring climate change, and drought in Afghanistan.