Assessment of Agriculture Drought in Uthangarai Taluk, Krishnagiri District Using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques

Drought is a serious natural hazard with far-reaching impacts including soil damages, economic losses, and threatening the livelihood and health of local residents. To monitor the present (2015) vegetation health across Uthangarai taluk using Remote Sensing and Gis techniques. Landsat datasets with a spatial resolution of 30 m and from different platforms were used to identify the VCI (Vegetation Condition Index) and TCI (Temperature Condition Index). The VCI is based on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) datasets. Land surface temperature (LST) datasets were used to extract Temperature condition index. As a result, the VHI (Vegetation Health Index) was produced and classified into five categories extreme, severe, moderate, mild, and no drought. The results show practically extreme drought has mainly occurred in north and west region in Uthangarai taluk. It is observed that moderate to severe drought condition has occurred in singarapettai, samalpatti, karappattu, kallavi and anandur. Mild drought condition has occurred in Uthangarai, egur, viswasampatti and kilkuppam. This approach allows decision makers to monitor, investigate and resolve drought conditions more effectively.