Lab exercise 9, due right before the class on April2, 2009
EES5093: Remote Sensing in Hydrology. Geological Sciences Department, UTSA
http://www.utsa.edu/LRSG/
Student name: ______________
Drought trend of Texas from 2000-2009
Purpose: this lab is to help you get familiar with the U.S. Drought Monitor database and know how to use them analyze drought trend of a region.
Go to the U.S. Drought Monitor database: http://drought.unl.edu/dm/dmshps_archive.htm. You will see the website similar as the Figure 1 below. The drought data are once every week and have different formats you can use. In this lab, you will use two formats of data, Shapefile and EXCEL. for example, for the 2009-03-10, I have downloaded the shapefile and uploaded in the ArcGIS (Figure 2), and also only show in the Texas State (Figure 3). Figure 4 shows the EXCEL table for the state sheet. from the table, you can actually know the percentage of area in each state (or county) are in D0, D1, D2, D3, D4. For how to explain the excel sheet, this is what I found from the website (in Figure 1):
"The Excel files contain the percent area statistics for the given week. The Drought Monitor classes are cumulative---if a region is in D2, it is also in D1 and D0. The statistics provided on the site represent those cumulative values. For example, Region A has 75% in D0, 50% in D1 and 10% in D2. 25% (75%-50%) of Region A is in D0 only; 40% in D1 and D0; and 10% in D2, D1 and D0."
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
What I need for you to do in the lab is to use the database and analyze the drought trend of Texas from 2000-2009 for the January and/or February. Show me represented maps, data table and statistics to support your analysis and conclusion.