Monitoring of agricultural drought in semi-arid ecosystem of Peninsular India through indices derived from time-series CHIRPS and MODIS datasets

[Display omitted] •Agricultural drought is frequent phenomenon in Rayalaseema region.•High temperatures and erratic rainfall are major factors for drought events.•Monthly NVSWI and 1-month SPI shows significant correlation in drought monitoring.•Monthly NVSWI and monthly VHI shows robustness of NVSWI in drought monitoring.•NVSWI plays a key role in monitoring and assessment of agricultural droughts. The reliable and consistent remote sensing-based drought indices along with Geographic Information System (GIS) play a significant role in the mapping, and monitoring of agricultural drought. The core objective of the present study is to monitor agricultural drought dynamics over the semi-arid Rayalaseema region of Peninsular India during the year 2000 to 2018 by using the Normalized Vegetation Supply Water Index (NVSWI) derived from time-series remote sensing data products. NVSWI is the normalization of Vegetation Supply Water Index (VSWI), which was computed by integrating the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Land Surface Temperature (LST). The analysis of Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) shows that in dry year (2001), majority of the study area experienced extreme dry conditions (SPI