Drought risk assessment in Iraq using remote sensing and GIS techniques

Abstract EN

This paper aims to investigate the drought levels in Iraq using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques.

Meteorological and Agricultural droughts were calculated based on Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Anomaly of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), respectively.

The drought risk maps were prepared by calculating the classes frequency of droughts.

Finally, a resultant risk map was obtained by integrating agriculture and meteorological drought risk maps.

The results indicated that 14.4% area has Slight drought, 61.6% area face moderate risk, 23.2% area face severe risk and 0.8% area face very severe risk within the study area.

It was evident from the study that northwest of Iraq is more prone to drought.