Original title: Significant Remote Sensing Vegetation Indices: A Review of Developments and Applications
A vegetation index is a formula that uses light reflected by plants to estimate things like cover, health, or growth. Different formulas combine visible light, often green, with light people cannot see. There is no one formula that works for every sensor, landscape, and purpose, so researchers tailor and check indices for each use. This review compares more than 100 indices and discusses where each may be useful and where it has drawbacks.
Imagine choosing a recipe for dinner. A recipe that works with one oven and one set of ingredients may fail with another. In this paper, recipes stand for formulas that estimate plant cover and health: each needs to fit the plants, the setting, and the equipment, and its results need checking on the ground.
Farmers, land managers, and researchers use these measurements to assess plant cover, health, and growth. Choosing an index that fits the plants, setting, and equipment matters because different formulas can represent vegetation differently.
The abstract describes a review of indices and their applications; it does not identify one index as best overall or report comparative performance results. It also does not establish that indices based on hyperspectral or UAV platforms will succeed in every setting.
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Significant Remote Sensing Vegetation Indices: A Review of Developments and Applications — Jinru Xue, Baofeng Su — Journal of Sensors — doi:10.1155/2017/1353691
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.