Influence of satellite-derived rainfall patterns on plague occurrence in northeast Tanzania.

Background: In the tropics, rainfall data are seldom accurately recorded, and are often discontinuous in time. In the scope of plague-research in northeast Tanzania, we adapted previous research to reconstruct rainfall patterns at a suitable resolution (1 km), based on time series of NDVI: more accurate satellite imagery was used, in the form of MODIS NDVI, and rainfall data were collected from the TRMM sensors instead of in situ data. First, we established a significant relationship between monthly rainfall and monthly composited MODIS NDVI.