Paper Title
Drought Monitoring using Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) for Marathwada Region, Maharashtra

Abstract
The study aims at monitoring meteorological and agricultural drought at 1 km using Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) for Marathwada region of Maharashtra using SPEI-3 and SPEI-6 respectively. The Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) for computation of SPEI is calculated from Land Surface Temperature data from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) using Hargreaves method. The drought frequency (moderate, severe and extreme category) and proportional area under each drought severity category are calculated. The result shows thatthe Marathwada region had large area under meteorological and agricultural drought in the year 2001-2005, 2008-2009 and 2014-2017 as compared to other years. The year 2013 and 2014 hadlarge area under exceptional severity category for both meteorological and agricultural droughtsas compared to other years. Specifically, most of the area ofOsmanabad district have faced frequent meteorological and agricultural drought events. In Aurangabad district meteorological drought did not progress to agricultural drought as indicated by low frequency of SPEI-6 as compared to SPEI-3. The Nanded district was found to experience more agricultural drought as compared to meteorological drought. Keywords - Drought monitoring, SPEI, Marathwada region, CHIRPS