ABSTRACT
Agricultural drought and consequent crop loss is a recurring global phenomenon that leads to hunger, poverty, economic instability, and moreover, fluctuation of national agricultural gross domestic product (GDP). Since a substantial part of agricultural lands of India still depends upon monsoonal rain for cultivation of crops, irregularities in monsoonal rain act as a triggering factor for meteorological drought, which eventually causes reduction in the yields of Kharif crops. The increasing trend of drought in northern and central India affects the livelihood of millions of people. The western part of West Bengal is relatively dry and susceptible to frequent droughts and crop loss. This study aims to assess the spatio-temporal variation of drought during the Kharif (rainfed) season through an open-source computational platform (R studio) and freely available satellite datasets. Long-term (2000–2019) satellite-derived Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) and standardized precipitation index (SPI) along with Ground-Based Rainfall Anomaly Index (RAI) and Yield Anomaly Index (YAI) were used to assess the agricultural drought dynamics and their interrelationship with ground based-observations. The study identified extreme drought events occurring in the years 2000, 2005, and 2010, which reduced the overall crop production. The analysis also revealed that meteorological drought during the growing season has a significant influence on vegetation health and crop production in the Bankura (r = 0.4) and Purulia (r = 0.62) districts. However, Purba and Paschim Medinipur are not significantly affected by short dry spells; rather, crop loss in this region is associated with flood events (e.g., 2007). Moreover, the study supports the excellent computational and visualization efficiency of open source software to assess drought-related stress. The outcomes of this study may provide useful information to combat recurrent drought events, which may be useful for the decision makers to minimize the devastating effects of drought by adopting a proper planning and management strategy.
