Modeling of agricultural drought risk pattern using Markov chain and GIS in the western part of Bangladesh Md. Kamruzzaman 1 • Md. Enamul Kabir 2 • A. T. M. Sakiur Rahman 3 • Chowdhury Sarwar Jahan 4 • Quamrul Hasan Mazumder 4 • M. Sayedur Rahman 5 Received: 5 April 2016 / Accepted: 9 December 2016 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 Abstract The aim of the study is to assess the agricultural drought risk condition in the context of global climate change in the western part of Bangladesh that covers about 45% area of the country for the period of 1960–2011. Drought Index (DI) and Drought Hazard Index (DHI) have been calculated by Markov Chain analysis and that of Drought Vul- nerability Index (DVI) from socioeconomic and physical indicators. The DI values show that the northern part in general is more drought-prone, having less crops prospect, whereas the southern part is less drought-prone with high crop potentiality. The probability of extreme drought occurrence increases in recent decades in some parts as a result the Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10668-016-9898-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Md. Kamruzzaman mkzaman@ru.ac.bd; mkzaman.ru@gmail.com Md. Enamul Kabir Enamul.Kabir@usq.edu.au A. T. M. Sakiur Rahman shakigeo@gmail.com Chowdhury Sarwar Jahan sarwar_geology@yahoo.com Quamrul Hasan Mazumder qhm27@yahoo.com M. Sayedur Rahman say_rahman@yahoo.co.uk 1 Institute of Bangladesh Studies, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi 6205, Bangladesh 2 School of Agricultural, Computational and Environmental Sciences, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba Campus, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia 3 Institute of Environmental Science, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi 6205, Bangladesh 4 Department of Geology and Mining, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi 6205, Bangladesh 5 Department of Statistics, University of Rajshahi, Rajshahi 6205, Bangladesh 123 Environ Dev Sustain DOI 10.1007/s10668-016-9898-0