scholarly journals Assimilation of Earth Observation Data Over Cropland and Grassland Sites into a Simple GPP Model

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 749
Author(s):  
Michele Meroni ◽  
Dominique Fasbender ◽  
Raul Lopez-Lozano ◽  
Mirco Migliavacca

The application of detailed process-oriented simulation models for gross primary production (GPP) estimation is constrained by the scarcity of the data needed for their parametrization. In this manuscript, we present the development and test of the assimilation of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) observations into a simple process-based model driven by basic meteorological variables (i.e., global radiation, temperature, precipitation and reference evapotranspiration, all from global circulation models of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). The model is run at daily time-step using meteorological forcing and provides estimates of GPP and LAI, the latter used to simulate MODIS NDVI though the coupling with the radiative transfer model PROSAIL5B. Modelled GPP is compared with the remote sensing-driven MODIS GPP product (MOD17) and the quality of both estimates are assessed against GPP from European eddy covariance flux sites over crops and grasslands. Model performances in GPP estimation (R2 = 0.67, RMSE = 2.45 gC m−2 d−1, MBE = −0.16 gC m−2 d−1) were shown to outperform those of MOD17 for the investigated sites (R2 = 0.53, RMSE = 3.15 gC m−2 d−1, MBE = −1.08 gC m−2 d−1).

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 2061 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Melendo-Vega ◽  
M. Martín ◽  
Javier Pacheco-Labrador ◽  
Rosario González-Cascón ◽  
Gerardo Moreno ◽  
...  

The 3-D Radiative Transfer Model (RTM) FLIGHT can represent scattering in open forest or savannas featuring underlying bare soils. However, FLIGHT might not be suitable for multilayered tree-grass ecosystems (TGE), where a grass understory can dominate the reflectance factor (RF) dynamics due to strong seasonal variability and low tree fractional cover. To address this issue, we coupled FLIGHT with the 1-D RTM PROSAIL. The model is evaluated against spectral observations of proximal and remote sensing sensors: the ASD Fieldspec® 3 spectroradiometer, the Airborne Spectrographic Imager (CASI) and the MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) onboard Sentinel-2. We tested the capability of both PROSAIL and PROSAIL+FLIGHT to reproduce the variability of different phenological stages determined by 16-year time series analysis of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer-Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (MODIS-NDVI). Then, we combined concomitant observations of biophysical variables and RF to test the capability of the models to reproduce observed RF. PROSAIL achieved a Relative Root Mean Square Error (RRMSE) between 6% to 32% at proximal sensing scale. PROSAIL+FLIGHT RRMSE ranged between 7% to 31% at remote sensing scales. RRMSE increased in periods when large fractions of standing dead material mixed with emergent green grasses —especially in autumn—; suggesting that the model cannot represent the spectral features of this material. PROSAIL+FLIGHT improves RF simulation especially in summer and at mid-high view angles.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 2668 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christof J. Weissteiner ◽  
Raúl López-Lozano ◽  
Giacinto Manfron ◽  
Grégory Duveiller ◽  
Josh Hooker ◽  
...  

Long timeseries of Earth observation data for the characterization of agricultural crops across large scales are of high interest to crop modelers, scientists, and decision makers in the fields of agricultural and environmental policy as well as crop monitoring and food security. They are particularly important for regression-based crop monitoring systems that rely on historic information. The major challenge lies in identifying pixels from satellite imagery that represent pure enough crop signals. Here, we present a data-driven semi-automatic approach to identify pure pixels of two crop groups (i.e., winter and spring crops and summer crops) based on a MODIS–NDVI timeseries. We applied this method to the European Union at a 250 m spatial resolution. Pre-processed and smoothed, daily normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data (2001–2017) were used to first extract the phenological data. To account for regional characteristics (varying climate, agro-management, etc.), these data were clustered by administrative units and by year using a Gaussian mixture model. The number of clusters was pre-defined using data from regional agricultural acreage statistics. After automatic labelling, clusters were filtered based on agronomic knowledge and phenological information extracted from the same timeseries. The resulting pure pixels were validated with two different datasets, one based on high-resolution Sentinel-2 data (5 sites, 2 years) and one based on a regional crop map (1 site, 7 years). For the winter and spring crop class, pixel purity amounted to 93% using the first validation dataset and to 73% using the second one, averaged over the different years. For summer crops, the respective values were 61% (91% without one critical validation site) and 72%. The phenological analyses revealed a clear trend towards an earlier NDVI peak (approximately −0.28 days/year) for winter and spring crops across Europe. We expect that this dataset will be useful for various applications, from crop model calibration to operational crop monitoring and yield forecasting.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 2554
Author(s):  
David K. Swanson

Daily Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values from the MODIS Aqua and Terra satellites were compared with on-the-ground camera observations at five locations in northern Alaska. Over half of the spring rise in NDVI was due to the transition from the snow-covered landscape to the snow-free surface prior to the deciduous leaf-out. In the fall after the green season, NDVI fluctuated between an intermediate level representing senesced vegetation and lower values representing clouds and intermittent snow, and then dropped to constant low levels after establishment of the permanent winter snow cover. The NDVI value of snow-free surfaces after fall leaf senescence was estimated from multi-year data using a 90th percentile smoothing spline curve fit to a plot of daily NDVI values vs. ordinal date. This curve typically showed a flat region of intermediate NDVI values in the fall that represent cloud- and snow-free days with senesced vegetation. This “fall plateau” was readily identified in a large systematic sample of MODIS NDVI values across the study area, in typical tundra, shrub, and boreal forest environments. The NDVI level of the fall plateau can be extrapolated to the spring rising leg of the annual NDVI curve to approximate the true start of green season.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 1131
Author(s):  
Tao Yu ◽  
Pengju Liu ◽  
Qiang Zhang ◽  
Yi Ren ◽  
Jingning Yao

Detecting forest degradation from satellite observation data is of great significance in revealing the process of decreasing forest quality and giving a better understanding of regional or global carbon emissions and their feedbacks with climate changes. In this paper, a quick and applicable approach was developed for monitoring forest degradation in the Three-North Forest Shelterbelt in China from multi-scale remote sensing data. Firstly, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), Ratio Vegetation Index (RVI), Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction of Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FPAR) and Net Primary Production (NPP) from remote sensing data were selected as the indicators to describe forest degradation. Then multi-scale forest degradation maps were obtained by adopting a new classification method using time series MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) images, and were validated with ground survey data. At last, the criteria and indicators for monitoring forest degradation from remote sensing data were discussed, and the uncertainly of the method was analyzed. Results of this paper indicated that multi-scale remote sensing data have great potential in detecting regional forest degradation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fan Liu ◽  
Chuankuan Wang ◽  
Xingchang Wang

Abstract Background Vegetation indices (VIs) by remote sensing are widely used as simple proxies of the gross primary production (GPP) of vegetation, but their performances in capturing the inter-annual variation (IAV) in GPP remain uncertain. Methods We evaluated the performances of various VIs in tracking the IAV in GPP estimated by eddy covariance in a temperate deciduous forest of Northeast China. The VIs assessed included the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), the enhanced vegetation index (EVI), and the near-infrared reflectance of vegetation (NIRv) obtained from tower-radiometers (broadband) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), respectively. Results We found that 25%–35% amplitude of the broadband EVI tracked the start of growing season derived by GPP (R2: 0.56–0.60, bias < 4 d), while 45% (or 50%) amplitudes of broadband (or MODIS) NDVI represented the end of growing season estimated by GPP (R2: 0.58–0.67, bias < 3 d). However, all the VIs failed to characterize the summer peaks of GPP. The growing-season integrals but not averaged values of the broadband NDVI, MODIS NIRv and EVI were robust surrogates of the IAV in GPP (R2: 0.40–0.67). Conclusion These findings illustrate that specific VIs are effective only to capture the GPP phenology but not the GPP peak, while the integral VIs have the potential to mirror the IAV in GPP.


Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. 3676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Chen ◽  
Xiangnan Liu ◽  
Chao Ding ◽  
Fang Huang

Land degradation is a widespread environmental issue and an important factor in limiting sustainability. In this study, we aimed to improve the accuracy of monitoring human-induced land degradation by using phenological signal detection and residual trend analysis (RESTREND). We proposed an improved model for assessing land degradation named phenology-based RESTREND (P-RESTREND). This method quantifies the influence of precipitation on normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) variation by using the bivariate linear regression between NDVI and precipitation in pre-growing season and growing season. The performances of RESTREND and P-RESTREND for discriminating land degradation caused by climate and human activities were compared based on vegetation-precipitation relationship. The test area is in Western Songnen Plain, Northeast China. It is a typical region with a large area of degraded drylands. The MODIS 8-day composite reflectance product and daily precipitation data during 2000–2015 were used. Our results showed that P-RESTREND was more effective in distinguishing different drivers of land degradation than the RESTREND. Degraded areas in the Songnen grasslands can be effectively detected by P-RESTREND. Therefore, this modified model can be regarded as a practical method for assessing human-induced land degradation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 7185-7208 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. MacBean ◽  
F. Maignan ◽  
P. Peylin ◽  
C. Bacour ◽  
F.-M. Bréon ◽  
...  

Abstract. Correct representation of seasonal leaf dynamics is crucial for terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs), but many such models cannot accurately reproduce observations of leaf onset and senescence. Here we optimised the phenology-related parameters of the ORCHIDEE TBM using satellite-derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index data (MODIS NDVI v5) that are linearly related to the model fAPAR. We found the misfit between the observations and the model decreased after optimisation for all boreal and temperate deciduous plant functional types, primarily due to an earlier onset of leaf senescence. The model bias was only partially reduced for tropical deciduous trees and no improvement was seen for natural C4 grasses. Spatial validation demonstrated the generality of the posterior parameters for use in global simulations, with an increase in global median correlation of 0.56 to 0.67. The simulated global mean annual gross primary productivity (GPP) decreased by ~ 10 PgC yr−1 over the 1990–2010 period due to the substantially shortened growing season length (GSL – by up to 30 days in the Northern Hemisphere), thus reducing the positive bias and improving the seasonal dynamics of ORCHIDEE compared to independent data-based estimates. Finally, the optimisations led to changes in the strength and location of the trends in the simulated vegetation productivity as represented by the GSL and mean annual fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (fAPAR), suggesting care should be taken when using un-calibrated models in attribution studies. We suggest that the framework presented here can be applied for improving the phenology of all global TBMs.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (14) ◽  
pp. 4407-4419 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Olsen ◽  
S. Miehe ◽  
P. Ceccato ◽  
R. Fensholt

Abstract. Most regional scale studies of vegetation in the Sahel have been based on Earth observation (EO) imagery due to the limited number of sites providing continuous and long term in situ meteorological and vegetation measurements. From a long time series of coarse resolution normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data a greening of the Sahel since the 1980s has been identified. However, it is poorly understood how commonly applied remote sensing techniques reflect the influence of extensive grazing (and changes in grazing pressure) on natural rangeland vegetation. This paper analyses the time series of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) NDVI metrics by comparing it with data from the Widou Thiengoly test site in northern Senegal. Field data include grazing intensity, end of season standing biomass (ESSB) and species composition from sizeable areas suitable for comparison with moderate – coarse resolution satellite imagery. It is shown that sampling plots excluded from grazing have a different species composition characterized by a longer growth cycle as compared to plots under controlled grazing or communal grazing. Also substantially higher ESSB is observed for grazing exclosures as compared to grazed areas, substantially exceeding the amount of biomass expected to be ingested by livestock for this area. The seasonal integrated NDVI (NDVI small integral; capturing only the signal inherent to the growing season recurrent vegetation), derived using absolute thresholds to estimate start and end of growing seasons, is identified as the metric most strongly related to ESSB for all grazing regimes. However plot-pixel comparisons demonstrate how the NDVI/ESSB relationship changes due to grazing-induced variation in annual plant species composition and the NDVI values for grazed plots are only slightly lower than the values observed for the ungrazed plots. Hence, average ESSB in ungrazed plots since 2000 was 0.93 t ha−1, compared to 0.51 t ha−1 for plots subjected to controlled grazing and 0.49 t ha−1 for communally grazed plots, but the average integrated NDVI values for the same period were 1.56, 1.49, and 1.45 for ungrazed, controlled and communal, respectively, i.e. a much smaller difference. This indicates that a grazing-induced development towards less ESSB and shorter-cycled annual plants with reduced ability to turn additional water in wet years into biomass is not adequately captured by seasonal NDVI metrics.


2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michał T. Chiliński ◽  
Marek Ostrowski

Abstract Remote sensing from unmanned aerial systems (UAS) has been gaining popularity in the last few years. In the field of vegetation mapping, digital cameras converted to calculate vegetation index (DCVI) are one of the most popular sensors. This paper presents simulations using a radiative transfer model (libRadtran) of DCVI and NDVI results in an environment of possible UAS flight scenarios. The analysis of the results is focused on the comparison of atmosphere influence on both indices. The results revealed uncertainties in uncorrected DCVI measurements up to 25% at the altitude of 5 km, 5% at 1 km and around 1% at 0.15 km, which suggests that DCVI can be widely used on small UAS operating below 0.2 km.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 5955-5975
Author(s):  
Hai Zhang ◽  
Shobha Kondragunta ◽  
Istvan Laszlo ◽  
Mi Zhou

Abstract. The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on board the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R (GOES-R) series enables retrieval of aerosol optical depth (AOD) from geostationary satellites using a multiband algorithm similar to those of polar-orbiting satellites' sensors, such as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). However, this work demonstrates that the current version of GOES-16 (GOES-East) ABI AOD has diurnally varying biases due to limitations in the land surface reflectance relationships between the 0.47 µm band and the 2.2 µm band and between the 0.64 µm band and 2.2 µm band used in the ABI AOD retrieval algorithm, which vary with the Sun–satellite geometry and NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index). To reduce these biases, an empirical bias correction algorithm has been developed based on the lowest observed ABI AOD of an adjacent 30 d period and the background AOD at each time step and at each pixel. The bias correction algorithm improves the performance of ABI AOD compared to AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) AOD, especially for the high and medium (top 2) quality ABI AOD. AOD data for the period 6 August to 31 December 2018 are used to evaluate the bias correction algorithm. After bias correction, the correlation between the top 2 quality ABI AOD and AERONET AOD improves from 0.87 to 0.91, the mean bias improves from 0.04 to 0.00, and root-mean-square error (RMSE) improves from 0.09 to 0.05. These results for the bias-corrected top 2 qualities ABI AOD are comparable to those of the corrected high-quality ABI AOD. By using the top 2 qualities of ABI AOD in conjunction with the bias correction algorithm, the areal coverage of ABI AOD is increased by about 100 % without loss of data accuracy.


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