Farhani N. auteur aut IRD Carreau Julie auteur aut IRD Kassouk Z. auteur aut IRD Le Page Michel auteur aut IRD Chabaane Z. L. auteur aut IRD Boulet Gilles auteur aut IRD text journalArticle eng text/pdf reformatted digital access Surface water stress remote sensing indices can be very helpful to monitor the impact of drought on agro-ecosystems, and serve as early warning indicators to avoid further damages to the crop productivity. In this study, we compare indices from three different spectral domains: the plant water use derived from evapotranspiration retrieved using data from the thermal infrared domain, the root zone soil moisture at low resolution derived from the microwave domain using the Soil Water Index (SWI), and the active vegetation fraction cover deduced from the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time series. The thermal stress index is computed from a dual-source model Soil Plant Atmosphere and Remote Evapotranspiration (SPARSE) that relies on meteorological variables and remote sensing data. In order to extend in time the available meteorological series, we compare the use of a statistical downscaling method applied to reanalysis data with the use of the unprocessed reanalysis data. Our study shows that thermal indices show comparable performance overall compared to the SWI at better resolution. However, thermal indices are more sensitive for a drought period and tend to react quickly to water stress. specialized indicators droughts evapotranspiration reanalyses TUNISIE 072 126 14 8 1813 [27 ] 2022 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010084721 10.3390/rs14081813 [F B010084721] https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010084721 https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/2022-06/010084721.pdf IRD - Base Horizon / Pleins textes 2022-06-03 2025-02-24 fdi:010084721 fre