Monitoring of vegetation on global scale via passive remote sensing: the overview.

Passive space-borne remote sensing of vegetation properties is purposed to capture

canopy dynamics at the rate limited by overpass frequencies and various other factors.

Captured radiometric signals are transmitted to the ground stations and processed into

inputs for geophysical models of net primary productivity (NPP – main characteristic of

vegetation biomass growth - Field et al 1998) and radiative (light) transfer in the canopy.

PAR=IPAR+TPAR (1)

IPAR=APAR+RPAR (2)

ƒAPAR = APAR/PAR; ƒIPAR = IPAR/PAR ;

ƒRPAR = RPAR/PAR ; ƒTPAR = TPAR/PAR

ƒAPAR + ƒRPAR +ƒTPAR=1

NPP=ƒAPAR∙ε*∙g(T) ∙h(W) (3)

ƒIPAR =PAR ∙[1-exp(-k ∙LAI)](4)

where PAR - photosynthetically active radiation (total), IPAR - PAR intercepted by the

canopy, TPAR – PAR transmitted through the canopy, APAR PAR absorbed by the

canopy, RPAR -PAR reflected by the canopy, ƒIPAR, ƒRPAR, ƒTPAR and ƒAPAR –

fractions of IPAR and APAR in PAR, ε* – maximum light use efficiency (LUE), g(T) –

temperature effects, h(W) – water stress effects, k – light extinction coefficient, LAI –

leaf area index (Field et al 1998, Nouvellon et al 2000). The fAPAR, LUE and LAI are

the ultimate candidates for inclusion. Surface temperature, and soil/surface moisture

content often have well pronounced seasonality and should contribute in handling g(T)

and h(W) issues influencing LUE. Close attention should be paid to presence and

duration of cycles in the dynamics of chosen variables. Surface properties with cycles
shorter then one growing season should be selected as they contribute to the within

season variability. Otherwise, the dynamics related to growing season is overlaid on the

bigger cycles. Hardly, can canopy height and fraction vegetation cover cycles appear

within growing season for coniferous or rain forests but for grasslands and arid

ecosystems those variables are phenologically relevant.

There are numerous methods for estimation of fraction of PAR absorbed by the canopy

(ƒAPAR) in the literature, but most of them rely on vegetation indices obtained from

reflectances in the visual and NIR portion of spectrum. Strong linear relationship of

ƒAPAR and NDVI made this index the most popular for the purpose. Yet, the relationship

differs for different instruments and land cover types, depending on sensor band location,

timing in the season (changes in canopy structure) and fraction of vegetation cover

(Myneni et al 1997, Knyazikhin et al 1999, Gobron et al 2000). For MERIS sensor

Gobron et al (1999) used their own BRDF adjusted MGVI with uniform linear

relationship to ƒAPAR across the globe. In the production of MODIS MOD15A2, the

main and backup algorithms are used to keep continuous records. Main algorithm is

based on radiative transfer logic, and backup algorithm – on the empirical relationship

with NDVI (Knyazikhin et al 1999). In the near future, MODIS science team plans to

transfer the production to the use of linearly related EVI in the ƒAPAR backup algorithm.

Similarly to ƒAPAR, the most popular estimation methods of leaf area index rely on

empirical relationships with vegetation indices. There is much criticism for this approach

in the literature, especially for the use of NDVI that looses sensitivity when LAI reaches
2. Wide dynamic range vegetation index (WDRVI) was developed by Gitelson (2004)

and performed better for LAI values 2-4 (Vina et al 2004). In 2006, Deng et al used

reflectances in RED, NIR and SWIR bands to derive simple ratio(SR) and reduced simple

ratio (RSR) indices. Authors claim that optimized for land cover type and tuned with

BRDF parameters the relationships between two indices yield estimates of LAI that are

close to inversion of four-scale canopy reflectance model (Chen & Leblanc 1997).

MOD15A2 production uses method proposed by Myneni et al (1997) based on photon

transfer theory in canopies modeled for six different biomes (Knyazikhin et al 1999).

MODIS LAI/ƒAPAR product is the only source of global moderate spatial resolution

continuous records of ready to use ƒAPAR and LAI. However, there are several archives

–AVHRR, MERIS, VEGETATION – of vegetation indices and raw reflectance data that

can be used to produce ƒAPAR or LAI on demand.

Unlike ƒAPAR, leaf area index can be estimated from microwave measurements both

active and passive. In empirical retrieval methods, LAI is related to weighted mean

intensity ratio (Manninen, 2002), or to normalized brightness temperatures in X band

(proportional) and K-a band (inversely proportional) (Palocia 1995.) Radiative transfer

models of observed brightness temperature consider vegetation as obscuring factor for

soil emissions (Renzullo et al 2006.) In this context, there are three ways of treating the

canopy (Kerr and Wigneron 1995.) First one has it as continuous homogeneous medium

characterized by opacity and single scatter albedo. Second splits the scattering into four

components representing leaves, branches, trunks and stalks. Third – the most complex

one – has the vegetation layer consisting of discrete plants/trees and takes into account
length and orientation of the four scattering components. The main concern here is

volumetric plant water content (PWC) of the canopy. Simple models have it directly

proportional to canopy opacity [τ=bPWC], but the coefficient b varies with incidence

angle and time in the season. PWC is well related to Microwave Polarization Difference

Index (MPDI) for some microwave bands (Wigneron et al 2003). Corrected with factors

that influence b, volume fraction of vegetation (VFV) can be estimated from MPDI

measurements. During the greenup phase, VFVis highly correlated with LAI (Wigneron

1995.) Global scale satellite retrievals of LAI are problematic for passive microwave

sensors because of large footprint and heterogeneity within one pixel. However, the

synergistic methods with visible and infrared data are being actively developed for

retrieval of vegetation properties (Kerr and Wigneron 1995.)

Light use efficiency is a property of green vegetation that summarizes the conditions for

photosynthesis determining the fraction of absorbed light used to produce chemical

energy (Guo & Trotter 2004.) Retrieval of LUE by the means of remote sensing not as

well developed as retrievals of LAI or ƒAPAR. In the ground based measurements LUE

(measured in mol CO2 per mol of photons) has found to be related with Photochemical

Reflectance Index (PRI) that utilizes chlorophyll fluorescence in green portion of

spectrum (Pennuelas et al 1995). There were attempts to relate LUE to vegetation

greenness indicators such as NDVI and red edge chlorophyll concentration index (Sims et

al 2006). In 2005, Drolet et al tried to come up with PRI algorithm for MODIS. Just for

having a better correlation, their attempt ended up with using top of the atmosphere

reflectances of bands that are far from those specified in Penuelas et al (1995). However,
they recognized the difficulty of atmospheric correction for the bands used in PRI. As a

remote sensing product light use efficiency has not been produced on the global scale.

LUE is specie specific and depends on many factors that including soil water availability,

vapor pressure deficit and surface temperature. Dynamics of LUE is a mixture of

temporal variations in those driving factors (Guo & Trotter 2004.)

Retrieval of the land surface (skin) temperature (LST) from satellite observations has

been done by many satellite missions including solar orbiting AVHRR and MODIS (Jin

M, 2004.) In the latter sensor the LST is obtained by inverting Planck’s Law equation for

several bands including ones in thermal diapason and by correcting it for known

emissivity (Wang 1999.) Jin (2004) identifies several problems with LST retrievals for

NOAA AVHRR and other polar orbiting platforms. The first problem is the drift of the

satellite’s orbit that causes inconsistency in timing for day and night observations. The

second problem is unknown emissivities of the observed surfaces that are highly variable

in space. The third complication is the atmospheric contamination that prevents direct

measurement of LST. Viewing geometry is the last but not the least source of

uncertainties for LST retrieval from orbiting equipment. In the production of MOD11

level 2 and 3 products the window split algorithm corrects for atmospheric and emissivity

effects with regard to viewing geometry (Wang 1999.) To capture diel dynamics, day and

night acquisitions are made by both Terra and Aqua. However, the products are produced

with daily, 8 day and monthly temporal resolutions. There is a possibility to obtain land

surface temperature from geostationary satellites such as GOES that have higher

acquisition frequency, but sacrifices include limitation in coverage and low spatial
resolution. The resolution is also sacrificed when estimating LST from microwave

emissions (Njoku 1995.)

Monitoring of soil moisture content (SMC) in the thin (1-5 cm) top layer of soil is well

established through the means of passive remote sensing in microwave portion of

spectrum. The basic principle of retrival is that observed brightness temperature of soil

varies with the water content (Wigneron et al 2003.) In addition to that, the discrepancy

between emissions with horizontal and vertical polarization from bare soil is higher than

the same discrepancy for emissions from vegetation (Paloscia 1995.)Vegetation related

effects on brightness temperatures are addressed in the same three manners described in

the LAI retrieval via microwave section. As an empirical shortcut, Wigneron (1995)

recommends exploiting drops in MPDI, or other polarization indices obtained from

brightness temperatures. Some studies used vegetation indices such as PVI and NDVI for

this purpose (Wang and Choudhury 1995). Paloscia (1995), simply recommend using

lower frequencies that are less affected by the green foliage. The Antecedent Precipitation

Index (API) has been a popular empirical indicator of soil moisture in studies that worked

with spaceborne sensors (Wigneron et al 2003.) Over the last two decades, the index went

through numerous modifications changing the microwave bands and variables that

compensate for vegetation opacity. In the same review Wigneron mentions a cohort of

methods of surface moisture retrievals based on regression, neural networks and lookup

tables. The author points out that these stocastic models suffer form inability to address

the issue of spatiatial variability and can be used for local/regionals studies only.
The utility of remotely sensed data in thermal, infrared and visible portions of spectrum

for retrieval of SMC related parameters has also been studied extensively. Sandholt et al

(2002) used so called “land surface temperature/ vegetation index surface space” to

develop Temperature Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI) for characterizing canopy

resistance to evaporation (rc). They assumed that rc is driven mostly by soil moisture

availability and reported high negative correlation between TVDI and SWC. Though,

their methodology is scene limited and hence suffers greatly from heterogeneity of land

cover within the scene. Studies of Gao (1996), Serano et al (2000), Dennison et al (2003),

Sims and Gamon (2003) used vegetation water content indices derived from NIR

and SWIR signals. Evapotranspiration Index developed by Nishida et al (2003) was

based on the same principles but took into account some additional factors. They also

proposed the evepotranspiration product for MODIS land suite where they had

evaporation split in two components -vegetation and soil. The latter one is clearly a proxy

of soil moisture content. There is no operational SMC product with global coverage.

Studies that involved large scale SMC in data assimilation experiments (Walker and

Houser 2001, Renzullo et al 2006) had their surface moisture observations simulated. Yet

with limited consistency, the product can be generated using data from SMMR, AMSR,

AMSR-e and EDEOS II instruments (Wigneron et al 2003.)

Monitoring of temporal variations of percent vegetation cover (PVC) and canopy height

(CH) within one growing season has not been considered for development /

implementation at global scale yet. The methodologies used currently for estimation of

PVC and CH are probabilistic and rather categorical (close to those of land cover
mapping) (Hansen, 2003) and therefore they use the whole year of remotely sensed data

to come up with an annual map of vegetation, continuous fields. It is based on decision

trees techniques - a statistical nonlinear (attribute based) separation of different

vegetation types and their particularities in spatial distributions of crown and canopy

covers (Hansen et al 2002). The product is layered in broadleaf, needleleaf, evergreen,

deciduous, non-tree, shrubs, crops and other herbaceous vegetation fields presenting

those in great spatial details. However, the temporal variation is lost as well as canopy

height information. The MOD44B production does not use a deterministic canopy model

and there is no radiative transfer model to invert or even proxy variable to relate PVC to.

However, there have been many alternative attempts to derive PVC and CH and some of

that experience can be used to generate observations of canopy height and percent

vegetation cover.

Usually canopy height is the task for active remote sensing - radar and lidar sensors, but

those can hardly be used on the global scale with high temporal resolution. Correlation of

PVC and CH with other canopy characteristics brought the idea of using similar passive

remote sensing methods with care for species/biome and pheno-phase dependency of

these relationships. Shoshany et al (1996) proposed using reflectances in red and infrared

bands to obtain percent vegetation cover with empirical linear model. A threshold based

approach is used for derivation of continues Fractional Vegetation product in NOAAs

GVI product suite. These methods, as well as derivation of percent cover based on linear

mixing of vegetation indices (Purevdorj et al 1998, Montandon and Small 2008) has yet
several problems to overcome - sensor dependence, land cover dependence and soil type

effects.

Talking about all these vegetated surface properties, numerous vegetation indecis (VI)

were mentioned almost in every paragraph. Therefore, the reason dictates authors to

provide some insight on VI matter. The evolution of spectral vegetation indices can be

partitioned into three stages or generations. First stage - the indices are developed based

on (optical) electromagnetic responses of vegetation in different portions of spectrum.

Essentially, the indices constitute ratios, differences or other mathematical

transformations on spectral band responses that are some how related to certain

biophysical characteristic of the foliage. The important moment here is that the

relationship with surface attributes is the one and only utility of indices. They do not

measure the actual physical property, rather they capture the relative dynamic of the

canopy development. After the index is tested in multiple studies, the second stage

comes, where the original index is corrected for encountered problems. Basically, it

evolves into a new index (next generation) that utilizes sensitivities of other bands to the

setbacks of original index. Numerous examples of this include ARVI (Kaufman and

Tanré 1992), SAVI (Huete 1988), GEMI (Pinty and Verstraete 1992 ) and AFRI (Karnieli

et al 2001). The third generation of indices addressed the issue of nonlinearity in

relationships to the core biophysical variables. Such resolution - adding and tuning the

correcting coefficients - was used in EVI (Liu and Huete 1995) and WDRVI (Gitelson

2003). A more sophisticated approach came from Gobron et al (1999) where they used

minimization function and tuning of BRDF parameters in derivation of MGVI for

MERIS sensor. A similar approach was taken by Deng et al (2006) for alternative
estimation of LAI from VEGETATION sensor reflectances. In 2000 paper, Gobron et al

showed that vegetation indices from different sensors derived in this manner give

remarkable agreement in resulting fAPAR. The third generation approach recognizes

dependence of index values on band characteristics but the tuned slope makes index

derived product less dependent on the sensor characteristics. The linearity in relationship

with actual physical property of the surface gives a great advantage and simplicity to the

third generation indices for usage in data assimilation. It opens the possibility for efficient

fusion of products from multiple sensors in derivation of one land surface variable

(Leeuwen et al 2006, Dente et al 2008.)