Spatio-temporal analysis of vegetation dynamics for Saurashtra region of Gujarat Dhanapriya M*, Kumaraperumal R, Kannan Balaji1, Bhatt Hiren P2 Department of Remote Sensing and GIS 1Department of Soil Water Conservation and Engineering, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, 641003, Tamil Nadu, India 2Earth-ecosystem Research and Training Division, VEDAS Research Group, EPSA Observation Data and Archival System (VEDAS) Space Applications Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation, Ahmedabad, 380015, Gujarat, India *Email for correspondence: dhanasoul@gmail.com
Online published on 23 January, 2019. Abstract The timely monitoring of vegetation and crop production has been a demanding and challenging task to researchers where the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor provides valuable temporal information with wide area coverage that highly supports the monitoring of agricultural crops. The present investigations were undertaken in Saurashtra region of Gujarat to analyze the vegetation dynamics using time series MODIS vegetation indices viz Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from 2007 to 2017. The NDVI and EVI showed a good range of temporal variations in vegetation intensity and condition; however NDVI had higher value when compared to EVI which indicated the varying intensity of biomass in Saurashtra region. Deciduous forest has higher NDVI and EVI followed by cropland (kharif), scrub/degraded forest and cropland (rabi). The crops cultivated during the rabi season have lower NDVI and EVI value as compared to the crops cultivated during the kharif season. It is evident from the study that the MODIS sensor-derived vegetation indices provide the valuable information on the health and condition of vegetation at shorter temporal periods. The study between the coarse resolution satellite-derived vegetation indices showed a larger variation between the profiles and hence this study suggests that it could be undertaken using data with higher spatial resolution. Top Keywords NDVI, EVI, MODIS, time series, spatio-temporal, ecosystem. Top |