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Satellites Confirm Deepening Drought

Farm Futures has partnered with the Ecology and Agriculture Spatial Analysis Laboratory (EASAL) at Kansas State University to bring these maps to you. Each map is composed from satellite data taken over a two-week period. The EASAL maps show current vegetative health for the past two weeks and compare vegetative health with the previous two-week period, with the previous year and with the long-term average. Green reflects healthy vegetative development, while brown reflects a lack of healthy vegetative biomass production.

Continental U.S. Vegetation Condition

Satellite imagery shows summer vegetative growth occurring across much most non-mountainous areas of the country, but the drought is really taking its toll in the Plains, with damage becoming more evident in the southern and eastern Midwest and Southeast as well.

Mid-July 2012 Compared to 23-Year Average

The intensity of this year's drought is becoming increasingly apparent in the way of decreased photosynthetic activity versus the long-term average for the western Plains and southwestern Midwest, with crops also deteriorating relative to normal in the eastern Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic and the Southeast. Photosynthetic activity remains near normal in the northwestern Midwest, but pockets of decreased activity are beginning to show up there as well.

Mid-July 2012 Compared to Early July 2012

Changes in crop conditions were a bit less significant over the past two weeks, relative to previous imagery. However, the Southeast saw a mixture of improvement and losses relative to early July. Areas of noted deterioration were in eastern Kansas and western Missouri, as well as in the northern High Plains. There was also increased deterioration in corn and soybean areas of Minnesota, the Dakotas and Wisconsin.

Mid-July 2012 Compared to Mid-July 2011

Satellite imagery suggests that crops are in much worse condition relative to the previous year at this time in the northern High Plains, as well as in a band stretching from Kansas eastward across the Ohio and Tennessee River Valleys. While not without problems, photosynthetic activity was still above year ago levels across much of the South, as well as pockets of the northern Midwest.

Early July 1989 - 2011