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Are soil‐adjusted vegetation indices better than soil‐unadjusted vegetation indices for above‐ground green biomass estimation in arid and semi‐arid grasslands?
Author(s) -
Ren H.,
Feng G.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
grass and forage science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.716
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1365-2494
pISSN - 0142-5242
DOI - 10.1111/gfs.12152
Subject(s) - environmental science , arid , vegetation (pathology) , normalized difference vegetation index , enhanced vegetation index , biomass (ecology) , grassland , steppe , hydrology (agriculture) , soil science , leaf area index , vegetation index , agronomy , ecology , geology , medicine , geotechnical engineering , pathology , biology
Accurate estimation of grassland biomass has been a central focus due to its importance in ecosystem processes and carbon cycles. This study aimed to examine whether the performance of soil‐adjusted vegetation indices for estimating above‐ground green biomass was better than that of soil‐unadjusted vegetation indices in arid and semi‐arid grasslands. Above‐ground green biomass in desert steppe of I nner M ongolia and corresponding moderate‐resolution imaging spectroradiometer ( MODIS ) surface reflectance 8‐day composite MOD 09 Q 1 data were collected during late S eptember of 2013. Results showed that soil‐adjusted SAVI (soil‐adjusted vegetation index), MSAVI (modified soil‐adjusted vegetation index), OSAVI (optimized soil‐adjusted vegetation index), TSAVI (transformed soil‐adjusted vegetation index), ATSAVI (adjusted transformed soil‐adjusted vegetation index) and PVI (perpendicular vegetation index) did not improve estimation accuracy over soil‐unadjusted simple ratio ( SR ) and normalized difference vegetation index ( NDVI ), due to low green vegetation cover (<30%) in the study area. Our results suggest that these soil‐adjusted vegetation indices may be not suitable for describing green vegetation information in arid and semi‐arid grasslands with low green vegetation cover (<30%).