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In order to evaluate the capability of NOAA-AVHRR data ford drought monitoring in the northwest of Iran having cold semi-arid climate, a study plan was designed involving the production of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and vegetation condition index (VCI) indices and correlating their values to precipitation data. Raw AVHRR images were processed and geometric and radiometric corrections were performed. Seven-day maximum NDVI maps were produced and VCI was calculated using the maximum and minimum NDVI values for the same time period. Precipitation statistics from 19 synoptic meteorological stations were collected. The study covered a five-year time period with three consecutive months in the growing season. Pearson correlation was performed to correlate NDVI and VCI values to precipitation data. Different time lag schemes were tried and the highest correlation coefficients (r values) were obtained while correlating NDVI and VCI to three-month (current plus last two months) precipitation. Better agreement was observed between NDVI and precipitation as compared with that between VCI and precipitation in individual stations. Good correlations were also obtained between average NDVI and VCI of the study area and average three-month precipitation. The results indicated that NOAA-AVHRR derived NDVI well reflects precipitation fluctuations in the study area promising a possibility for early drought awareness necessary for drought risk management. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.