Drought is one of the most damaging natural disasters which cause huge losses to agriculture, ecosystem, and society. Natural vegetation which is one of the most important factors for ecosystem health and environmental and land resources planning is severely affected by drought. Drought management is therefore essential for sustainable development. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between changes in vegetation and drought, using remote sensing data in Sari, northern part of Iran. These relationships were studied as simultaneous and up to 2-month lag for the month of May during the period 2000-2017. The results indicated that the correlation between vegetation and drought in the lag-time approach was higher than that in the simultaneous approach. The highest correlation occurred between normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and standardized precipitation index (SPI). So, NDVI and SPI indices were found to be the best indicators of relationship between vegetation and drought.
