Revista de teledetección y SIG

Abstracto

Remote Sensing Drought Indices and their Application in Mapping Spatial and Temporal Variations of Drought in Zimbabwe

Oshneck Mupepi*

Drought is increasing in severity and frequency in Southern African countries hence there is need to assess its spatial and temporal patterns for the purpose of easing decision making on resilience building. The paper sought to assess the spatial and temporal variations of drought in Zimbabwe between 2015 and 2021. TCI, VCI and VHI indices were used to map drought in this study. ArcMap 10.5, SPSS and Microsoft excel were used for data analysis. The findings indicated that drought varied from district to district or province to province as well as from year to year across the study years. Fluctuation were noted as years 2015 and 2016 were drought years when most parts of the country were affected followed by mild droughts in 2017 and 2018. Years 2019 and 2020 registered severe drought in most parts of the country whilst year 2021 was mildly affected. Drought frequency analysis over the past years showed that most southern, south western and western Zimbabwe districts were the most affected, an indication of aridity influence on drought severity. However, despite drought fluctuation during the study period, some southern and western parts of the country were in constant severe drought conditions as they got affected more than 5 times in 7 years. Therefore arid areas need to be prioritized for drought resilience capacities to make them not lag behind with regards to achieving sustainable development. The study recommends Southern African countries to prepare communities in dry areas for drought resilience as the general trends in drought despite some fluctuations indicate increasing spatial coverage and severity of droughts especially in arid areas.