Drought Assessment Using GIS and Remote Sensing in Amman-Zarqa Basin, Jordan

This study aims at assessing drought for Amman-Zarqa basin, north Jordan. This basin is one of the important basins in Jordan where most of the agricultural and hydrological activates are located. During the last decades, Amman-Zarqa basin had faced a high variability of the rainy season which starts every year in October and ends in April. The main objective of this research is to find out if this basin is currently facing drought conditions. Two different drought indices were used in this study; these are the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to evaluate drought using rainfall data and satellite images. Geographical information systems (GIS) software were used in this study to; 1) Create spatial digital database to hold meteorological information for the study area, 2) Generate thematic layers representing spatial distribution of drought for both SPI and NDVI and 3) Delineate areas with high drought risk using SPI and NDVI and compare the results of both models . The results obtained from this study show that Amman-Zarqa basin is currently facing drought conditions. Furthermore, it was concluded that the combination of various indices offer better understanding and better monitoring of drought conditions for semi-arid basins like Amman-Zarqa Basin.