Monitoring Agricultural Drought in the Near East - Monitoring and Predicting Agricultural Drought: A Global Study - page 221

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model (Gesch and Larson, 1996) for regional-level mapping of various ba-
sic and derived climatic variables at 1-km resolution (De Pauw, 2002). An-
other important tool for spatialization is remote sensing. Remote sensing
has become a standard tool in most food security early warning systems,
such as FEWS, GIEWS, and MARS (Monitoring Agriculture with Remote
Sensing, a project of the Joint Research Center of the European Commis-
sion; http://mars.aris.sai.jrc.it). This development has been promoted by
the decreasing costs of satellite data products and image analysis tools,
the difficulty of obtaining timely climatic data, and significant correlations
between soil moisture status or biomass productivity and some parameters
derived from spectral analysis (e.g., normalized difference vegetation in-
dex). Further details on remote-sensing techniques for drought monitoring
are provided in chapters 5-8.

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D rought Vulnerability Mapping
A first task for an early warning system is to understand the spatial
va riations of drought risk. If good time series data exist for spatially
well-distributed climatic stations, drought risk can be spatialized from the
probability surfaces of selected drought indicators. However, for drought
planning it is also essential to go beyond the symptoms of drought, as they
appear from the meteorological or hydrological records. As experienced in
the region, access to and the stability of the natural resource capital (par-
ticularly natural vegetation, climate, soil, and irrigation water) are major
determinants of the resilience of rural livelihood systems against drought.
Understanding the underlying causes of vulnerability and anticipating the
impact of drought thus requires an integrated approach, which considers
both the differences in agroecological and socioeconomic characteristics
between different areas.
The basis for mapping vulnerability to drought could be a spatial frame-
work of combined agroecological zones and production systems zones. The
agroecological zones can be established by integrating available climatic,
soil, terrain, and land cover digital data sets. The production system zones
can be derived from remote sensing in combination with farming systems
information. By integrating the spatial agroecological and socioeconomic
data, “agroecozones” can be established, which have unique characteristics
in terms of climate, soil, and water resources, population characteristics,
and livelihood systems. The agroecozones offer a useful framework for
selecting sampling areas as part of a regular drought-monitoring program.

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C onclusions
The Near East is a region with a high degree of aridity, and it experiences
frequent droughts. Agriculture is a major and sensitive sector of the re-
gion's economy, consuming most of the available water resources. Agricul-
tural production of major grain crops is strongly affected by fluctuations