A dataset of monthly temperature vegetation dryness index on the Loess Plateau from 2000 to 2024

The Loess Plateau is characterized by a fragile ecological environment, and drought disasters pose significant constraints on regional security and social development, necessitating urgent research on drought monitoring. Soil moisture serves as a critical indicator of drought conditions, and the Temperature Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI) can be used to estimate surface soil moisture, thereby monitoring and reflecting regional drought status. This dataset is based on MODIS satellite data, specifically the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Land Surface Temperature (LST) products. Through processing steps including format conversion, image cropping, and projection transformation, combined with SRTM DEM data, the NDVI-LST feature space method was used to identify feature space wet/dry edges. This yields a dataset of monthly temperature vegetation dryness index on the Loess Plateau from 2000 to 2024. The dataset covers the spatial range of 33°43′–41°16′ N and 100°54′–114°33′ E, and the data are provided in GeoTIFF format with a spatial resolution of 1 km. Relative validation using actual evapotranspiration data shows a negative correlation with TVDI, indicating good consistency between the two datasets. This dataset supports research on evaluating ecological engineering effectiveness and optimizing ecological restoration strategies within the study area. It reflects the spatiotemporal variations of surface drought on the Loess Plateau over the past two decades, providing foundational data for drought monitoring and research on ecosystem response mechanisms in the region.