Monitoring the Ecological Drought Condition of Vegetation during Meteorological Drought Using Remote Sensing Data

Drought caused by meteorological factors negatively affects vegetation in terrestrial ecosystems. In this study, the state in which meteorological drought affects vegetation was defined as the ecological drought of vegetation, and the ecological drought condition index of vegetation (EDCIveg) was proposed to quantitatively monitor the degree of impact. EDCI-veg is derived from a copulabased bi-variate joint probability model between vegetation and meteorological drought information, and can be expressed numerically how affected the current vegetation condition was by the drought when the drought occurred. Comparing past meteorological drought events with their corresponding vegetation condition, the proposed index was examined, and it was confirmed that EDCI-veg could properly monitor the ecological drought of vegetation. In addition, it was possible to spatially identify ecological drought conditions by creating a high-resolution drought map using remote sensing data.