Workshop on drought and remote sensing, 11-15 November 2013, Brdo, Slovenia

Training workshop on application of remote sensing data for drought monitoring with emphasis on EUMETSAT LSA SAF products was organized by Slovenian Environment Agency / DMCSEE  with the financial support of World Meteorological Organization. Workshop was organized in the frame of the IPA/2012/290552 Project: “Building resilience to disasters in Western Balkans and Turkey”.

Participants were experts in field of drought analysing and monitoring from national meteorological services of SE Europe. Guest lecturers were Ms. Carla Sofia Barroso from Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics from Portugal and Mr. Nicholas Ghilain from Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium. There were also two home lecturers - Ms. Mateja Iršič Žibert from Slovenian Environment Agency and Mr. Boštjan Muri from centre of excellence SPACE-SI.

Vegetation parameters and evapotranspiration, calculated from measurements of the geostationary satellite Meteosat and prepared in scope of  Land Surface Analysis Satellite Application Facility (LSA SAF) were presented. These products are suitable for drought analysis; however spatial resolution is low (pixel size cca. 4 km for our geographical latitude). The operational system of monitoring and determining drought at Slovenian Environment Agency was introduced. It is based on monitoring of current satellite vegetation images, prepared in the frame of LSA SAF and compared with averaged vegetation conditions calculated on the basis of archived values from the year 2006.

In the training part of the workshop, practical directions for operating with LSA SAF products, such as data input and processing in GIS environment were given.