In Mongolia, drought is a major natural disaster that can influence and devastate large regions, reduce livestock production, cause economic damage, and accelerate desertification in association with destructive human activities. The objective of this article is to determine the optimal satellite-derived drought indices for accurate and real-time expression of grassland drought in Mongolia. Firstly, an adaptability analysis was performed by comparing nine remote sensing-derived drought indices with reference indicators obtained from field observations using several methods (correlation, consistency percentage (CP), and time-space analysis). The reference information included environmental data, vegetation growth status, and region drought-affected (RDA) information at diverse scales (pixel, county, and region) for three types of land cover (forest steppe, steppe, and desert steppe). Second, a meteorological index (PED), a normalized biomass (NorBio) reference indicator, and the RDA-based drought CP method were adopted for describing Mongolian drought. Our results show that in forest steppe regions the normalized difference water index (NDWI) is most sensitive to NorBio (maximum correlation coefficient (MAX_R): up to 0.92) and RDA (maximum CP is 87%), and is most consistent with RDA spatial distribution. The vegetation health index (VHI) and temperature condition index (TCI) are most correlated with the PED index (MAX_R: 0.75) and soil moisture (MAX_R: 0.58), respectively. In steppe regions, the NDWI is most closely related to soil moisture (MAX_R: 0.69) and the VHI is most related to the PED (MAX_R: 0.76), NorBio (MCC: 0.95), and RDA data (maximum CP is 89%), exhibiting the most consistency with RDA spatial distribution. In desert steppe areas, the vegetation condition index (VCI) correlates best with NorBio (MAX_R: 0.92), soil moisture (MAX_R: 0.61), and RDA spatial distribution, while TCI correlates best with the PED (MAX_R: 0.75) and the RDA data (maximum CP is 79%). The VHI is a combination of constructed VCI and TCI, and can be used instead of them. Finally, the mode method was adopted to identify appropriate drought indices. The best two indices (VHI and NDWI) can be utilized to develop a combination drought model for accurately monitoring and quantifying drought in the future. Additionally, the new framework can be adopted to investigate and analyze the suitability of satellite-derived drought indices and determine the most appropriate index/indices for other countries or areas.
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