A high temporal resolution NDVI time series to monitor drought events in the Horn of Africa

This study investigates the reconstruction of climatological patterns and vegetation dynamics in the Horn of Africa region using high temporal resolution (i.e. daily) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) datasets. The analysis compares a straight-forward processing approach to derive a dail...

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Main Authors: Riccardo D’Ercole, Daniele Casella, Giulia Panegrossi, Paolo Sanò
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2024-12-01
Series:International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation
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Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1569843224006204
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author Riccardo D’Ercole
Daniele Casella
Giulia Panegrossi
Paolo Sanò
author_facet Riccardo D’Ercole
Daniele Casella
Giulia Panegrossi
Paolo Sanò
author_sort Riccardo D’Ercole
collection DOAJ
description This study investigates the reconstruction of climatological patterns and vegetation dynamics in the Horn of Africa region using high temporal resolution (i.e. daily) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) datasets. The analysis compares a straight-forward processing approach to derive a daily vegetation index from a geostationary (SEVIRI) satellite with existing NDVI series from geostationary or polar-orbiting (MODIS, MetOp-AVHRR) satellites, highlighting the impact of cloud contamination on data quality in high temporal resolution datasets. Using a smoothing process designed to reconstruct the upper envelope of the vegetation status series, we obtained a daily vegetation dataset that effectively mitigated cloud-induced fluctuations, outperforming polar-orbiting (e.g. MODIS) satellite-derived dataset in capturing regional climatology. We demonstrated this through statistical analysis, including autocorrelation and mean absolute difference between consecutive observations. We showed that cloud contamination significantly affects high temporal resolution NDVI series, particularly in forest areas, which makes it difficult to identify a suitable dataset to validate our approach. Therefore, we mitigated this problem using a Maximum Value Compositing technique, designed to remove cloud-induced biases and further compared our results with another independent vegetation index at coarser temporal resolution derived from AVHRR. We found that our vegetation index closely relates with MODIS 10-day composites after removing cloud-contaminated pixels. Furthermore, the study evaluates the sensitivity of the selected NDVI datasets to drought events, demonstrating the strength of the proposed SEVIRI dataset in capturing the intensity and persistence of vegetation anomalies. In conclusion, the study presents an innovative strategy for deriving daily-resolution NDVI datasets in cloud-prone regions, validating it with independent datasets at different sub-monthly temporal scales.
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spelling doaj-art-c8ed4d1b07c04ceda7ea65377b98a1e52024-12-19T10:52:50ZengElsevierInternational Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation1569-84322024-12-01135104264A high temporal resolution NDVI time series to monitor drought events in the Horn of AfricaRiccardo D’Ercole0Daniele Casella1Giulia Panegrossi2Paolo Sanò3Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (CNR-ISAC), Italy; University of Naples Federico II, Italy; Corresponding author.Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (CNR-ISAC), ItalyInstitute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (CNR-ISAC), ItalyInstitute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (CNR-ISAC), ItalyThis study investigates the reconstruction of climatological patterns and vegetation dynamics in the Horn of Africa region using high temporal resolution (i.e. daily) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) datasets. The analysis compares a straight-forward processing approach to derive a daily vegetation index from a geostationary (SEVIRI) satellite with existing NDVI series from geostationary or polar-orbiting (MODIS, MetOp-AVHRR) satellites, highlighting the impact of cloud contamination on data quality in high temporal resolution datasets. Using a smoothing process designed to reconstruct the upper envelope of the vegetation status series, we obtained a daily vegetation dataset that effectively mitigated cloud-induced fluctuations, outperforming polar-orbiting (e.g. MODIS) satellite-derived dataset in capturing regional climatology. We demonstrated this through statistical analysis, including autocorrelation and mean absolute difference between consecutive observations. We showed that cloud contamination significantly affects high temporal resolution NDVI series, particularly in forest areas, which makes it difficult to identify a suitable dataset to validate our approach. Therefore, we mitigated this problem using a Maximum Value Compositing technique, designed to remove cloud-induced biases and further compared our results with another independent vegetation index at coarser temporal resolution derived from AVHRR. We found that our vegetation index closely relates with MODIS 10-day composites after removing cloud-contaminated pixels. Furthermore, the study evaluates the sensitivity of the selected NDVI datasets to drought events, demonstrating the strength of the proposed SEVIRI dataset in capturing the intensity and persistence of vegetation anomalies. In conclusion, the study presents an innovative strategy for deriving daily-resolution NDVI datasets in cloud-prone regions, validating it with independent datasets at different sub-monthly temporal scales.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1569843224006204NDVIHigh temporal resolutionCloud contaminationGeostationary satelliteDroughtHorn of Africa
spellingShingle Riccardo D’Ercole
Daniele Casella
Giulia Panegrossi
Paolo Sanò
A high temporal resolution NDVI time series to monitor drought events in the Horn of Africa
International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation
NDVI
High temporal resolution
Cloud contamination
Geostationary satellite
Drought
Horn of Africa
title A high temporal resolution NDVI time series to monitor drought events in the Horn of Africa
title_full A high temporal resolution NDVI time series to monitor drought events in the Horn of Africa
title_fullStr A high temporal resolution NDVI time series to monitor drought events in the Horn of Africa
title_full_unstemmed A high temporal resolution NDVI time series to monitor drought events in the Horn of Africa
title_short A high temporal resolution NDVI time series to monitor drought events in the Horn of Africa
title_sort high temporal resolution ndvi time series to monitor drought events in the horn of africa
topic NDVI
High temporal resolution
Cloud contamination
Geostationary satellite
Drought
Horn of Africa
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1569843224006204
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