VegDRI Seeks Reviewers for Westward Expansion

As the 2007 growing season concludes, Vegetation Drought Response Index (VegDRI) researchers are thanking the reviewers who evaluated this year’s VegDRI maps, recruiting additional reviewers for next year, and preparing to enhance the VegDRI models for the 2008 growing season.

In 2008, VegDRI coverage will expand beyond 15 states in the central U.S. to cover the remainder of the western U.S. In addition to bolstering the existing corps of reviewers, researchers are seeking a new set of volunteers from the western states. If you would like to be a reviewer, please contact Meghan Sittler, National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) Research and Outreach Specialist at msittler2@unl.edu or 402-472-2712.

“The comments the reviewers provided this year will be critical in helping us adjust our models as we plan for the 2008 growing season,” said Dr. Brian Wardlow, the lead VegDRI researcher at the NDMC.

VegDRI researchers asked a team of 81 volunteer reviewers to ground-truth the biweekly VegDRI maps to determine whether the conditions represented on the maps corresponded with the vegetation conditions they observed for their local area.

VegDRI is relatively untested over the arid, sparsely vegetated, and mountainous environments that are encountered in the West.  Feedback from climate and drought experts, rangeland and crop experts, and agricultural producers will be crucial in determining the accuracy of VegDRI there, and in guiding future research activities to enhance its effectiveness in the West.

VegDRI integrates satellite-based vegetation observations and climate data traditionally used for drought monitoring with other environmental characteristics (such as soils, land cover, and irrigated land use) to map the impact of drought on vegetation conditions. The diverse set of environmental information contained in the data sets used to calculate VegDRI allows drought-related vegetation stress to be distinguished from other types of plant stress.

The NDMC produces VegDRI in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) and the High Plains Regional Climate Center (HPRCC), with sponsorship from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Risk Management Agency (RMA).

Main researchers working on VegDRI are Dr. Wardlow and Dr. Tsegaye Tadesse at the NDMC, and Jesslyn Brown and Yingxin Gu with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) at EROS.

VegDRI maps are on-line: http://drought.unl.edu/vegdri/VegDRI_Main.htm

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