Global agricultural drought mapping: Results for the year 2011

Food production and security will become more and more important issue as the world population has been steadily increasing since 1960. In contrast, the volume of crop production hasn´t been keeping up with human population´s uptrend. Major fall in crop production is a typical result of recurring agricultural droughts. To be able to predict such crop failures, a drought monitoring system at global scale is required. For this reason, a new project named Global Agricultural Drought Monitoring and Forecasting System (GADMFS) kicked off earlier in 2011. Our drought maps indicated multiple agricultural droughts in varying severities across the globe such as persistent extreme drought in Texas, US and short-term drought around Western Europe enclosing Germany, Luxembourg and France. The results from other sources such as US Drought Monitor (USDM) and European commission Joint Research Center Institute (JRC) for Environment and Sustainability (IES) confirmed our findings. In conclusion, accurate satellite vegetation indices are invaluable source for drought monitoring applications.