@article{325df35824464c4da299ee92ed5a317c,
title = "Developing a remotely sensed drought monitoring indicator for Morocco",
abstract = "Drought is one of the most serious climatic and natural disasters inflicting serious impacts on the socio-economy of Morocco, which is characterized both by low-average annual rainfall and high irregularity in the spatial distribution and timing of precipitation across the country. This work aims to develop a comprehensive and integrated method for drought monitoring based on remote sensing techniques. The main input parameters are derived monthly from satellite data at the national scale and are then combined to generate a composite drought index presenting different severity classes of drought. The input parameters are: Standardized Precipitation Index calculated from satellite-based precipitation data since 1981 (CHIRPS), anomalies in the day-night difference of Land Surface Temperature as a proxy for soil moisture, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index anomalies from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data and Evapotranspiration anomalies from surface energy balance modeling. All of these satellite-based indices are being used to monitor vegetation condition, rainfall and land surface temperature. The weighted combination of these input parameters into one composite indicator takes into account the importance of the rainfall-based parameter (SPI). The composite drought index maps were generated during the growing seasons going back to 2003. These maps have been compared to both the historical, in situ precipitation data across Morocco and with the historical yield data across different provinces with information being available since 2000. The maps are disseminated monthly to several main stakeholders{\textquoteright} groups including the Ministry of Agriculture and Department of Water in Morocco.",
keywords = "CDI, Composite index, Drought monitoring, ET, LST, NDVI, Remote sensing, SPI",
author = "Noureddine Bijaber and {El Hadani}, Driss and Mariam Saidi and Svoboda, {Mark D.} and Wardlow, {Brian D.} and Hain, {Christopher R.} and Poulsen, {Calvin Christian} and Mohammed Yessef and Atmane Rochdi",
note = "Funding Information: The present study was carried out in the framework of LDAS-Morocco project funded by the World Bank with the assistance of NASA (Goddard Space Flight Centre) and USAID. This support is gratefully acknowledged. We wish to thank the technical experts from the National Drought Mitigation Centre (NDMC) and the Center for Advanced Land Management Information Technologies (CALMIT) based at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the atmospheric scientist from the University of Maryland. Special thanks to the national experts (from the Agronomic and Veterinary Institute and the National Statistics Institute) for their contribution to this study (products validation, weighting methods, scripts automating and graphic interface). The MODIS/LST products were retrieved from the online Data Pool, courtesy of the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/data_access/data_pool. The other products (CHIRPS, NDVIa and ETa) were retrieved from the USGS FEWS NET Data Portal. Funding Information: Acknowledgments: The present study was carried out in the framework of LDAS-Morocco project funded by the World Bank with the assistance of NASA (Goddard Space Flight Centre) and USAID. This support is gratefully acknowledged. We wish to thank the technical experts from the National Drought Mitigation Centre (NDMC) and the Center for Advanced Land Management Information Technologies (CALMIT) based at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the atmospheric scientist from the University of Maryland. Special thanks to the national experts (from the Agronomic and Veterinary Institute and the National Statistics Institute) for their contribution to this study (products validation, weighting methods, scripts automating and graphic interface). The MODIS/LST products were retrieved from the online Data Pool, courtesy of the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/data_access/data_pool. The other products (CHIRPS, NDVIa and ETa) were retrieved from the USGS FEWS NET Data Portal. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.",
year = "2018",
month = feb,
day = "6",
doi = "10.3390/geosciences8020055",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "8",
journal = "Geosciences (Switzerland)",
issn = "2076-3263",
publisher = "MDPI AG",
number = "2",
}