Application of Microwave Vegetation Index (MVI) to monitoring drought in Sichuan province of China

One of the most serious droughts in last century occurred in Sichuan Basin in the summer of 2006. In this paper, three different methods were used to monitor this drought. The first method is TVDI (Temperature Vegetation Dryness Index). The second method is TMVDI (Temperature Microwave Vegetation Dryness Index). NDVI in method one was replaced by MVI. Because the microwave radiometer data can be obtained from descend or ascend orbit and high or low frequencies, four TMVDI results were derived. In order to evaluate the remote sensing based methods, SPI (Standardized Precipitation Index) method was also performed in this paper. Comparison between these methods shows that TMVDI from low frequency descend pass data are most suitable for the drought monitoring.