In order to understand, monitor and predict changes to our planet a comprehensive, integrated Earth observation system is required. Advances in remote sensing of the past ten years, contributed to the development of such system and numerous applications, which helped to make decisions for monitoring and predicting sustainable socioeconomic activities. This paper is discussing one of the contribution, which is a satellite-based comprehensive drought observing sub-system. It is based on observations of the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) flown on NOAA operational polar-orbiting satellites. This sub-system consists of the 1981 through present data base (16 km spacial and 7-day composite temporal resolution), which includes raw and calibrated radiances in the visible, near infrared and infrared spectral bands, processed (with eliminated high frequency noise) radiances, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), 20-year climatology, vegetation condition indices and also products, such as vegetation health, drought, vegetation fraction etc. In the past ten years, users around the world had responded positively to our efforts to present this information regularly on the following web site http://orbit-net.nesdis.noaa.gov/crad/sat/surf/vci/. Beside, this sub-system was tested in many countries of the world and showed good results in early drought detection and monitoring its development and impacts on the environment and socioeconomic activities, for assessment of biomass/crop productivity and fire risk, showed potential in monitoring mosquito-born epidemics, amount of water required for irrigation, and predicting ENSO impacts on productivity of land ecosystems. These applications were used in agriculture, forestry, weather models, climatology. Some examples will be presented along with explanation of data structure and use.