Paper Info
Title
Gauging the Severity of the 2012 Midwestern U.S. Drought for Agriculture.
Abstract
Different drought indices often provide different diagnoses of drought severity, making it difficult to determine the best way to evaluate these different drought monitoring results. Additionally, the ability of a newly proposed drought index, the Process-based Accumulated Drought Index (PADI) has not yet been tested in United States. In this study, we quantified the severity of 2012 drought which affected the agricultural output for much of the Midwestern US. We used several popular drought indices, including the Standardized Precipitation Index and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index with multiple time scales, Palmer Drought Severity Index, Palmer Z-index, VegDRI, and PADI by comparing the spatial distribution, temporal evolution, and crop impacts produced by each of these indices with the United States Drought Monitor. Results suggested this drought incubated around June 2011 and ended in May 2013. While different drought indices depicted drought severity variously. SPI outperformed SPEI and has decent correlation with yield loss especially at a 6 months scale and in the middle growth season, while VegDRI and PADI demonstrated the highest correlation especially in late growth season, indicating they are complementary and should be used together. These results are valuable for comparing and understanding the different performances of drought indices in the Midwestern US.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.3390/rs9080767
REMOTE SENSING
Keywords
Field
DocType
agricultural drought,corn yield,drought index,drought severity,Midwestern US,PADI
Physical geography,Hydrology,Crop,Remote sensing,Agriculture,Geology,Evapotranspiration,Precipitation,Spatial distribution
Journal
Volume
Issue
Citations 
9
8
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.37
0
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Xiang Zhang119534.67
Chehan Wei210.37
Renee Obringer310.37
Deren Li462074.26
Nengcheng Chen527041.34
Dev Niyogi674.60