Detection of Drought Prone/Affected Areas Using Remote Sensing and Meteorological Approaches in Iloilo, The Philippines

In the remote sensing approach, Soil Moisture Index (SMI) was used to identify and classify the study area in terms of severity of drought; with SMI values more than 0.3 were classified as a non-drought and SMI values less than 0.3 were subdivided into three categories, namely, severe drought (0-0.1), moderate drought (0.1-0.2) and slight drought (0.2-0.3). The pattern of rice production was examined and it revealed that there was a decline in production for the years that coincided with drought conditions with lower SMI values and higher rainfall anomaly (from rainfall data). Remote sensing and meteorological approaches were effectively used for detecting and mapping drought in the study area with higher spatial and temporal resolutions.