Drought Monitoring with the Standard Vegetation Index

Drought monitoring is an important component in drought early warning systems. This Recommended Practice, developed by the Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil, shows how to monitor the impacts of meteorological drought on natural vegetation using MODIS optical satellite imagery. It alculates the Standard Vegetation Index (SVI) based on the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) which has some advantages compared to the Normalized DIfference Vegetation Index (NDVI) such as an improved sensitivity over dense vegetation conditions and is less affected by aerosol influences.