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Remotely sensed soil moisture to estimate savannah NDVI

Boke-Olén, Niklas LU ; Ardö, Jonas LU orcid ; Eklundh, Lars LU orcid ; Holst, Thomas LU and Lehsten, Veiko LU (2018) In PLoS ONE 13(7).
Abstract

Satellite derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is a common data source for monitoring regional and global ecosystem properties. In dry lands it has contributed to estimation of inter-annual and seasonal vegetation dynamics and phenology. However, due to the spectral properties of NDVI it can be affected by clouds which can introduce missing data in the time series. Remotely sensed soil moisture has in contrast to NDVI the benefit of being unaffected by clouds due to the measurements being made in the microwave domain. There is therefore a potential in combining the remotely sensed NDVI with remotely sensed soil moisture to enhance the quality and estimate the missing data. We present a step towards the usage of remotely... (More)

Satellite derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is a common data source for monitoring regional and global ecosystem properties. In dry lands it has contributed to estimation of inter-annual and seasonal vegetation dynamics and phenology. However, due to the spectral properties of NDVI it can be affected by clouds which can introduce missing data in the time series. Remotely sensed soil moisture has in contrast to NDVI the benefit of being unaffected by clouds due to the measurements being made in the microwave domain. There is therefore a potential in combining the remotely sensed NDVI with remotely sensed soil moisture to enhance the quality and estimate the missing data. We present a step towards the usage of remotely sensed soil moisture for estimation of savannah NDVI. This was done by evaluating the European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) soil moisture and three of its individual products with respect to their relative performance. The individual products are from the advance scatterometer (ASCAT), Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS), and the Land Parameter Retrieval Model-Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System (LPRM-AMSR-E). Each dataset was used to simulate NDVI, which was subsequently compared to remotely sensed NDVI from MODIS. Differences in their ability to estimate NDVI indicated that, on average, CCI soil moisture differs from its individual products by showing a higher average correlation with measured NDVI. Overall NDVI modelled from CCI soil moisture gave an average correlation of 0.81 to remotely sensed NDVI which indicates its potential to be used to estimate seasonal variations in savannah NDVI. Our result shows promise for further development in using CCI soil moisture to estimate NDVI. The modelled NDVI can potentially be used together with other remotely sensed vegetation datasets to enhance the phenological information that can be acquired, thereby, improving the estimates of savannah vegetation phenology.

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Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; ; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
in
PLoS ONE
volume
13
issue
7
article number
e0200328
publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
external identifiers
  • scopus:85049671730
  • pmid:29995901
ISSN
1932-6203
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0200328
project
Global Savannah Phenology: Integrating Earth Observation, Ecosystem Modeling, and PhenoCams
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
c0361287-7cfd-463f-a4ae-d3a26c0c7938
date added to LUP
2018-07-30 14:19:53
date last changed
2024-03-01 22:32:06
@article{c0361287-7cfd-463f-a4ae-d3a26c0c7938,
  abstract     = {{<p>Satellite derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is a common data source for monitoring regional and global ecosystem properties. In dry lands it has contributed to estimation of inter-annual and seasonal vegetation dynamics and phenology. However, due to the spectral properties of NDVI it can be affected by clouds which can introduce missing data in the time series. Remotely sensed soil moisture has in contrast to NDVI the benefit of being unaffected by clouds due to the measurements being made in the microwave domain. There is therefore a potential in combining the remotely sensed NDVI with remotely sensed soil moisture to enhance the quality and estimate the missing data. We present a step towards the usage of remotely sensed soil moisture for estimation of savannah NDVI. This was done by evaluating the European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) soil moisture and three of its individual products with respect to their relative performance. The individual products are from the advance scatterometer (ASCAT), Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS), and the Land Parameter Retrieval Model-Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System (LPRM-AMSR-E). Each dataset was used to simulate NDVI, which was subsequently compared to remotely sensed NDVI from MODIS. Differences in their ability to estimate NDVI indicated that, on average, CCI soil moisture differs from its individual products by showing a higher average correlation with measured NDVI. Overall NDVI modelled from CCI soil moisture gave an average correlation of 0.81 to remotely sensed NDVI which indicates its potential to be used to estimate seasonal variations in savannah NDVI. Our result shows promise for further development in using CCI soil moisture to estimate NDVI. The modelled NDVI can potentially be used together with other remotely sensed vegetation datasets to enhance the phenological information that can be acquired, thereby, improving the estimates of savannah vegetation phenology.</p>}},
  author       = {{Boke-Olén, Niklas and Ardö, Jonas and Eklundh, Lars and Holst, Thomas and Lehsten, Veiko}},
  issn         = {{1932-6203}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{07}},
  number       = {{7}},
  publisher    = {{Public Library of Science (PLoS)}},
  series       = {{PLoS ONE}},
  title        = {{Remotely sensed soil moisture to estimate savannah NDVI}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0200328}},
  doi          = {{10.1371/journal.pone.0200328}},
  volume       = {{13}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}