To address the increasing drought risks exacerbated by climate change in arid-semiarid regions, this study proposes a novel framework integrating Temperature Vegetation Drought Index (TVDI) derived from reconstructed Land Surface Temperature (LST) with Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) to investigate drought characteristics in Gansu Province over 2003–2022. Missing MODIS LST data were reconstructed via spatiotemporal interpolation, and TVDI was combined with SPI to analyze spatiotemporal drought patterns and their correlations with key climatic factors and agricultural impacts. The results indicate that southern Gansu is predominantly unaffected by drought or experiences only slight drought, while severe drought is concentrated in northwestern regions; Gansu’s overall drought situation has worsened since 2008, with drought showing a moderate positive correlation with mean annual air temperature ( r = 0.52) and negative correlations with precipitation. Strong correlations between agricultural and meteorological drought are concentrated in the central Loess Plateau and eastern Hexi Corridor, whereas southeastern Gansu and western Hexi Corridor exhibit weak or no correlation. The findings provide critical scientific support for formulating region-specific drought resilience strategies, optimizing water resource allocation, and improving agricultural disaster risk reduction policies in Gansu Province and similar ecologically fragile areas.
Shi et al. (Sun,) studied this question.