Abstract:Taking Xuzhou City as a study case,normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI),soil-adjusted vegetation index(SAVI),and land surface temperature(LST) are derived from Landsat TM/ETM+ remotely sensed data and then used to monitor drought status. The spatial characteristics of the vegetation indices and LST are built,by which the temperature vegetation dryness index (TVDI) is calculated from the remote sensing images obtained on April 3,2001 and May 14,2007. The analyses of TVDI,LST,and rainfall show that TVDI can be used to monitor drought largely and the result of TVDI based on SAVI is better than that based on NDVI.