Agricultural Drought in Bangladesh - Monitoring and Predicting Agricultural Drought: A Global Study - page 318

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Table 24.2 Summary of drought-affected areas by cropping seasons in Bangladesh

Area under various drought severity class (million ha)

Cr opping season Very severe Severe Moderate Slight No drought Non-T. Aman

Pre- Kharif 0.403 1.15 4.76 4.09 2.09 —

Kharif (T. Aman only) 0.344 0.74 3.17 2.90 0.68 4.71

Rabi 0.446 1.71 2.95 4.21 3.17 —

So urce: Iqbal and Ali (2001).

planting date was August 30, the crop was forced to mature in about 128
days, resulting in a yield loss of about 28%.

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D rought Monitoring
Th ere has not been any significant step toward drought monitoring on a
re gular basis in Bangladesh. The country has been maintaining a fairly good
research effort under the National Agricultural Research System (NARS),
which includes 11 research institutes, the Bangladesh Agricultural Research
Council (BARC) being the apex body of NARS.
There is a lack of coordination among institutions that could have de-
veloped a drought-monitoring mechanism. There is no clear institutional
framework defining who should do drought monitoring. There is a Disas-
ter Management Bureau, which considers drought as a form of agricultural
disaster and only notes the yearly crop loss reported mostly in newspapers.
The information concerning moisture availability, especially in topsoil of
drought-vulnerable zones, is supposed to be collected by the Soil Resources
Development Institute and by the Department of Agriculture Extension.
These two organizations have personnel who can offer services at grassroot
levels.
The Bangladesh Meteorological Department collects weather informa-
tion, including temperature and precipitation on a daily basis. It has a good
number of weather stations all over the country. But these data are seldom
used for real-time monitoring of drought situations. BARC has facilities
for a geographic information system (GIS) and a database equipped with
models to monitor drought, but the agency does not have the scope and
mandate to monitor drought on a regular basis.

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U sing Satellite Data

The Space Research and Remote Sensing Organization (SPARRSO) of
Bangladesh is an efficient organization equipped with state-of-the-art tech-
nologies capable of monitoring drought situation. It receives Advanced
Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR; chapters 5 and 6) data
from the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration