The relationship between the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index and drought indices in the South Central United States

Abstract (from Natural Hazards): Drought indices are useful for quantifying drought severity and have shown mixed success as an indicator of drought damage and biophysical dryness. While spatial downscaling of drought indicators from the climate divisional level to the county level has been conducted successfully in previous work, little research to date has attempted to “upscale” remotely sensed biophysical indicators to match the downscaled drought indices. This upscaling is important because drought damage and indices are often reported at a coarser scale than the biophysical indicators provide. This research upscales National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer sensor-acquired Normalized [...]