In countries where the economy relies mostly on agricultural-livestock activities, such as Argentina, droughts cause significant economic losses. Currently, the most-used drought indices by the Argentinian National Meteorological and Hydrological Services are based on field precipitation data, such as the standardized precipitation index (SPI) and the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI). In this article, we explored the performance of the satellite-based soil moisture agricultural drought index (SMADI) for agricultural drought detection in Argentina during 2010-2015, and compared it with the one from the standardized soil moisture anomalies (SSMA), SPI and SPEI (at one-month and three-month temporal scales), using the Agricultural Ministry's drought emergency database as a benchmark. The performances were analyzed in terms of the suitability of each index to be included in an early warning system for agricultural droughts, including true positive rate (TPR), and both false positive and false negative rates. In our experiments, SMADI showed the best overall performance, with the highest TPR and F1-score, and the second best false positive rate (FPR), positive predictive value, and overall accuracy. SMADI also showed the largest difference between TPR and FPR. SSMA showed the lowest FPR, but also the lowest TPR, making it not useful for an alert system. Furthermore, field precipitation-based indices, yet simple and widely used, showed not to be suitable indicators for detection of agricultural drought for Argentina, neither in the one-month nor in the three-month scale.

中文翻译：

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遥感土壤湿度数据对阿根廷农业干旱检测的附加值


在经济主要依赖农牧业活动的国家，例如阿根廷，干旱会造成重大经济损失。目前，阿根廷国家气象水文部门最常用的干旱指数基于实地降水数据，例如标准化降水指数（SPI）和标准化降水蒸散指数（SPEI）。在本文中，我们探讨了2010-2015年阿根廷农业干旱卫星土壤湿度农业干旱指数（SMADI）的性能，并将其与标准化土壤湿度异常（SSMA）、SPI和SPEI（一个月和三个月的时间尺度），使用农业部的干旱应急数据库作为基准。分析了各指标是否适合纳入农业干旱预警系统，包括真阳性率（TPR）、假阳性率和假阴性率。在我们的实验中，SMADI 显示出最佳的整体性能，具有最高的 TPR 和 F1 分数，以及第二好的假阳性率 (FPR)、阳性预测值和总体准确性。 SMADI 还显示出 TPR 和 FPR 之间最大的差异。 SSMA 显示了最低的 FPR，但也显示了最低的 TPR，这使得它对于警报系统没有用处。此外，基于实地降水的指数虽然简单且使用广泛，但无论是在一个月还是在三个月范围内，都不是检测阿根廷农业干旱的合适指标。