Integrated system for drought monitoring serves to monitor and predict soil moisture and drought intensity, which can be further exploited for agricultural measures. Drought monitoring is key tool for supporting agricultural production, bussines & political decisions as well as education.

Drought monitoring is designed to assess the drought intensity and its impact on the landscape, where agriculture and horticulture are the primary target areas. Besides the coverage of bulit-up areas respectively water areas of the whole territory of the Czech Republic it is therefore usable also in forestry and for the description of the drought impact on ecosystem services of the other controlled and uncontrolled ecosystem.
Drought is monitored by several independent approaches so that we are able to look at the progress and the impact of drought from different points of view. The network of experts who share their observations from their place of interest in real is essential for evaluation of the progress and the impact of drought. Farmers, fruit growers and foresters can get involved as well as wide public who often are interested in monitoring drought and weather exposure in their free time.
Drought monitoring has been praised by the National Drought Mitigation Centre, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA, the world’s leading institution in the field of drought research.

The project is a result of cooperation between Global Change Research Institute CAS (Czech Globe), Mendel University in Brno and State Land Office that carry out the research and operate the web site. Other partners are Czech Hydrometeorological Institute and Masaryk University and many other institutions. Other stakeholders can be state administration, professional public and of course farmers.

Integrated system for drought monitoring was created as a research project in 2012. On 1 January 2017, the state administration (State Land Office) has actively entered into this system in order to guarantee the core functions of the system and to ensure its necessary development. Because of this the requierements of state administration have been transferred to a professional team.

Computational model of the system is based on real time daily meteorological data provided by the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute and also based on pedological data. The tool reflects and evaluates vegetation condition in a given time with use of TERRA satellite imagery. Outputs for the whole Czech Republic and Slovakia at a resolution 500 x 500 m are completely updated every Monday on www.intersucho.cz while forecasts are done daily.

The existence of a good scientific team and availability of necessary data is decisive.

It is necessary to count on the financial resources for the purchase of quality data and the costs of the corresponding system.

It is very useful to have network of experts (farmers) who share their observations from their place of interest and monitor drought and weather exposure in their free time.

For more information, a description of working methods and contacts visit the website https://www.intersucho.cz