Impact of Drought Duration and Severity on Drought Recovery Period for Different Land Cover Types in Balochistan, Pakistan

Drought is a prevalent complex natural disaster due to its environmental extent and can severely impact global ecosystems. For the purpose of monitoring droughts and assessing their effects on a regional and global level, usually remote sensing data with an appropriate temporal and spatial resolution can be accessed. This research utilized the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-based normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), land surface temperature (LST), gross primary productivity (GPP) and vegetation health index (VHI) to investigate the historical duration, severity and recovery period for drought in selected districts of Balochistan. The Pearson correlation was used to determine the local link between the duration and severity of the drought between 2001 and 2021. The results showed that 2001, 2002, and 2004 were the driest years in which extreme to mild drought occurred with severity of 36%, 48% and 48% respectively. On the other hand, the drought duration result revealed 80–275 days, 160–275 days, and 176–275 days for 2001, 2002, and 2004 respectively. The result also indicated that crop land, water bodies, grass land and forest land, were positive correlation while shrub land was negative correlation with drought severity. On the other hand, crop land, water bodies, grass land and forest land, were negative correlation while shrub land was the positive correlation with drought duration. The drought recovery period analysis resulted in 16–66 days, 18–67 days, and 17–66 days for the years 2001, 2002, and 2004 respectively. With every aspect considered, the study offers insightful information on drought resistance for improved management.