An application of the time integral NDVI for environmental assessment.

Recently the problems for ecological environment has become serious. Especially, monitoring of quantity and distribution of vegetation is important. Satellite remote sensing data is useful in this field. Analysing satellite data, influence by meteorological condition and human activity on ecological environment can be assessed. In this study, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) derived from NOAA AVHRR data is used for monitoring vegetation. The time integral of NDVI (iNDVI) is also calculated to estimate of vegetation, i.e. the amount of CO2 with photosynthesis, and water resources storage.Firstly, the difference of reflectance between vegetation and sand are confirmed. Secondly annual variation and range of NDVI evaluated for four kinds of land use category; urban area, paddy area, forest and coastal zone. Lastly, the characteristics of iNDVI were studied for each land use categories. From these results, applicability of NDVI and iNDVI to environmental assessment is discussed.