The agricultural drought remote sensing monitoring methods and prospects based on different underlying surface conditions

Drought is one of the major natural disasters for China’s agricultural industry. By selecting asuitable monitoring index based on land surface conditionsduring different growth periods of crops, remote sensing monitoring ofagricultural drought can timely and effectively evaluate the effect of drought on crop growth and provide animportant source for decisions to be made by thegovernment. The present study summarized the widely used agricultural remote sensing monitoring methods, which were based on different land surface conditions. These methods weredivided into three classes: monitoring methods based on bare surface or low vegetation cover, monitoring methods based on high vegetation cover, and integrated monitoring methods based on all land cover conditions. In addition, the future development directions of agricultural remote sensing drought monitoring werestudied and discussed, and included: 1) monitoring data beingtransformedfrom asingle data source to multi-source data; 2)monitoring indicatorschangingfrom single meteorological monitoring indicators to acomprehensive monitoring index, which integratesmeteorological, satellite remote sensing with crop physiological and physical characteristics; 3) the 3S technology integration and data sharing.