The Agricultural Stress Index (ASI) is a quick-look indicator that facilitates the early identification of cropped land with a high likelihood of water stress (drought). ASI related products (maps, spatial aggregation based on administrative unit) are processed by FAO GIEWS (Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture) every 10 days.
ASI Annual Summary is processed at the end of crop season. It depicts the percentage of arable land, within an administrative area, that has been affected by drought conditions over the entire cropping season. It differs from ASI dekadal product, which is based on conditions from the start of the season up to the current dekad.
The Index is based on the integration of the Vegetation Health Index (VHI) in two dimensions that are critical in the assessment of a drought event in agriculture: temporal and spatial. The first step of the ASI calculation is a temporal averaging of the VHI, assessing the intensity and duration of dry periods occurring during the crop cycle at the pixel level; this calculation includes the use of crop coefficients, which introduces sensitivity of a crop to water stress during each phenological phase. The second step determines the spatial extent of drought events by calculating the percentage of pixels in arable areas with a VHI value below 35 percent (this value was identified as a critical threshold in assessing the extent of drought in previous research by Kogan, 1995). Each administrative area is classified according to the percentage of the affected area to facilitate the quick interpretation of results.
Data creation: 2014-01-01
Supplemental Information:
No data value: -9999
Citation:
Recommended citation: © FAO - Agricultural Stress Index System (ASIS), http://www.fao.org/giews/earthobservation/, [Date accessed]
Contact points:
Metadata Contact: Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS)
Resource Contact: Yanyun Li
Resource constraints:
Data license policy: Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-NC- SA 3.0 IGO)
Online resources:
Agricultural Stress Index maps (annual summary)
