Monitoring soil and vegetation moisture using normalized multi-band drought index (NMDI) with the help of Landsat 8 imagery and QGIS over the Barind Tract of Bangladesh

Drought is undoubtedly a tremendous natural hazard resulting in a calamitous reduction in crop production including the fertility of the soil as well as the water content. The northwestern region of Bangladesh is a severe drought prone area with a great extent of temperature during summer that facilitates frequent evaporation and evapotranspiration of the soil leading to agricultural drought. Multiple band data from Landsat 8 had been utilized to derive the normalized multi-band drought index for monitoring the drought events and the intensity of drought from 2013 to 2018 over Barind Tract. The study had indicated the year 2016 as the maximum and minimum value holder of NMDI for vegetation moisture while the years 2016 and 2018 had been the maximum and minimum value holders of soil moisture NMDI respectively.