August 1988 Vegetation Anomaly, North America
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	Month:		Jan · Feb · Mar · Apr · May · Jun · Jul · Aug · Sep · Oct · Nov · Dec
	Dataset:		Vegetation Anomaly · Vegetation Index · Average Vegetation
	Region:		Africa · North America · South America
	In the spring and summer of 1988, the skies dried over a region covering about 25 percent of the total U.S. area, centered mostly on the Northern Great Plains. In 1988 there was an extreme La Niña in the Pacific that profoundingly influenced rainfall patterns across the continent. That summer was North America’s worst dry spell since the 1930s, impacting the nation's most productive agricultural lands and causing an estimated $40 billion in crop damages. In this 1-month composite image of North America acquired by NOAA’s AVHRR in August 1988, the areas of drought are colored brown. Scientists find that during the growing season, land plants can be used to measure drought. Healthy, thriving plants reflect and absorb visible and near-infrared light differently than plants under stress-these variations in reflectance and absorption can be measured by satellites to produce maps of healthy and stressed vegetation. This image shows Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) anomaly, which indicates where vegetation growth was above-average (green pixels), below-average (brown pixels), or normal (beige pixels).

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