NDVI from AVHRR
Remote Sensing Phenology
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The sensor responsible for the longest running series of NDVI products used for large-area phenology studies is carried aboard National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) polar-orbiting weather satellites (see Table 1). This sensor, known as the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), has a daily repeat cycle and, despite its name, a 1-km resolution (an AVHRR image pixel represents 1 square km of land surface). AVHRR data are used to generate NDVI-based images of the planet's land surface on a regular basis, thereby creating image series that portray seasonal and annual changes to vegetation worldwide. AVHRR NDVI data are available in a consistently processed database from 1982-present at an 8-km re-sampling grid covering the entire planet, and from 1989-present at a 1-km resolution for the conterminous United States.
Table 1. Low or no-cost satellite sensors and data streams utilized for land surface phenology studies1
1 Data sets are accessible for low- or no-cost for use in phenology research and applications (as of 1/4/2011).
2 USGS Earth Explorer: (https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/)
3 GIMMS data set: (https://ecocast.arc.nasa.gov/data/pub/gimms/3g.v0/)
4 Flemish Institute for Technology Research (VITO) for SPOT Vegetation S10 products: (http://www.spot-vegetation.com and http://free.vgt.vito.be)
5 Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center: (https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/dataset_discovery/modis/modis_products_table)
6 eMODIS: (https://dds.cr.usgs.gov/emodis/), Latency is approximately 15 hours for expedited data (released daily) and around 7 days for historical data.
(Public domain.)
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Date published: November 29, 2018Status: ActiveNDVI from Other Sensors
Readily available, no-charge data gathered by Landsat 7's Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) sensor can also be used to generate NDVI image products (see Table 1). With a resolution of 30 m, ETM+ data can be transformed into NDVI images that have greater spatial detail than those derived from...
Contacts: Jesslyn Brown -
Date published: November 27, 2018Status: ActiveNDVI, the Foundation for Remote Sensing Phenology
Remote sensing phenology studies use data gathered by satellite sensors that measure wavelengths of light absorbed and reflected by green plants. Certain pigments in plant leaves strongly absorb wavelengths of visible (red) light. The leaves themselves strongly reflect wavelengths of near-infrared light, which is invisible to human eyes. As a plant canopy changes from early spring growth to...
Contacts: Jesslyn Brown