Agricultural drought is a creeping disaster that overshadows the vegetative cover in general and cropland specifically in Iraq, a country that was well known for its agricultural production and fertile soil. In the recent years, the arable lands in Iraq experienced increasing land degradation that led to desertification, economic losses, food insecurity, and deteriorating environment. Remote sensing is employed in this study and four different indices are utilized, each of which is derived from MODIS satellite mission products. Agricultural drought maps are produced from 2003 to 2015 after masking the vegetation cover. Year 2008 was found the most severe drought year during the study period, where drought covered 37% of the vegetated land. This part of the study demonstrated the capability of remote sensing in fulfilling the need of an early warning system for agricultural drought over such a data-scarce region. This study also aims to monitor hydrological drought. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite-derived monthly Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS) is the hydrological drought indicator, that is used to calculate the deficit. Severity of drought events are calculated by integrating monthly water deficit over the drought period. In addition, drought recovery time is assessed depending on the estimated deficit. Major drought events are classified into several levels of severity by applying a drought monograph approach. The results demonstrated that GRACE TWS is a reliable indicator for drought assessment over Iraq, and provides useful information for decision makers which can be utilized in developing drought adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Drought is an extreme climate phenomenon that happens slowly and periodically threatens the environmental and socio-economic sectors. Developing countries have experienced crucial conditions in meeting the needs for food, energy, and water security. Natural disasters contribute as risky sources of food insecurity and vulnerability in the Middle East. This dissertation presents a country-level review and quantitative assessment of the current issues associated with the Food-Energy-Water-Security (FEWS) Nexus in the Middle East. In this study, sixteen countries in the Middle East are chosen, namely, Arabian Peninsula, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, and Turkey. The most recent datasets are used to study and analyze the factors that have increased the demand to understand and manage the linkage of FEW systems in the region. Water scarcity, extreme events, population growth, urbanization, economic growth, poverty, and political stability are found to be the key drivers of the current challenges in the Middle East. The results suggest that these factors have created a subsequent stress on FEW resources specifically on the water sector in the region. Therefore, more attention is required to sustain the FEW resources and cope with the socio-economic development. Moreover, this study presented a comprehensive assessment of drought and food-water-energy-security nexus across the Middle East using rigorous frameworks. Meteorological, agricultural, and hydrological droughts are analyzed using different drought indices at multiple timescales over the region for seven decades for the period of 1948-2017. The study further analyzes food insecurity in the Middle East through the exploration of drought (as a water stress factor), energy, and other socio-economic factors in the region. A Bayesian approach is conducted to link all the factors that best predict food insecurity in Middle East pooled from 16 countries in the region. Results reveal that the intensity of agricultural drought are the most aggravated over the region in all cases. Moreover, the results demonstrated the significant impacts of drought (as a water stress factor), agricultural land availability, population growth, livestock, and cereal production on food insecurity in the Middle East.