S jabbari - Department of agriculture and natural resource Payame noor university, I.R of Iran
S.J Khajeddin - Isfahan University of Technology
R Jafari
S Soltani
F Riahi

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of drought on various land use types. This study uses a combination of remote sensing data, field observations and information from local people to analyze the effects of drought on various land use changes for 2 years 1999 and 2004 in Isfahan. Imagery was selected for both drought and non-drought conditions based on precipitation data. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was then calculated for both images in order to detect the amount of change within the study area. The NDVI images were then analyzed for land use classification to determine which classification was the most susceptible to drought in terms of reduced NDVI values. Overall there was a decrease in the NDVI values for drought conditions as expected. The results of this experiment indicated that the rangeland classification had the highest percent change between the two NDVI images; mean NDVI value change from 0.199 to 0.895 resulting in a 63.6 percent change due to drought effects. Therefore rangeland were the most effected land classification; however there are several factors that occur in this class including grazing, exclosure and harvest that could have skewed the results.

Drought, NDVI, Land Use