Global-scale analysis of vegetation indices for moderate resolution monitoring of terrestrial vegetation

Alfredo R. Huete; Kamel Didan; Willem J. D. van Leeuwen; Eric F. Vermote

doi:10.1117/12.373090

17 December 1999 Global-scale analysis of vegetation indices for moderate resolution monitoring of terrestrial vegetation

Alfredo R. Huete, Kamel Didan, Willem J. D. van Leeuwen, Eric F. Vermote

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 3868, Remote Sensing for Earth Science, Ocean, and Sea Ice Applications; (1999) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.373090
Event: Remote Sensing, 1999, Florence, Italy

Abstract

Vegetation indices have emerged as important tools in the seasonal and inter-annual monitoring of the Earth's vegetation. They are radiometric measures of the amount and condition of vegetation. In this study, the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View sensor (SeaWiFS) is used to investigate coarse resolution monitoring of vegetation with multiple indices. A 30-day series of SeaWiFS data, corrected for molecular scattering and absorption, was composited to cloud-free, single channel reflectance images. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and an optimized index, the enhanced vegetation index (EVI), were computed over various 'continental' regions. The EVI had a normal distribution of values over the continental set of biomes while the NDVI was skewed toward higher values and saturated over forested regions. The NDVI resembled the skewed distributions found in the red band while the EVI resembled the normal distributions found in the NIR band. The EVI minimized smoke contamination over extensive portions of the tropics. As a result, major biome types with continental regions were discriminable in both the EVI imagery and histograms, whereas smoke and saturation considerably degraded the NDVI histogram structure preventing reliable discrimination of biome types.

Citation Download Citation

Alfredo R. Huete, Kamel Didan, Willem J. D. van Leeuwen, and Eric F. Vermote "Global-scale analysis of vegetation indices for moderate resolution monitoring of terrestrial vegetation", Proc. SPIE 3868, Remote Sensing for Earth Science, Ocean, and Sea Ice Applications, (17 December 1999); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.373090

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