Synonyms
Greenness
Definition
Greenness. The composite optical property of canopy chlorophyll content, leaf area, vegetation cover, and structure.
Soil line. A scatterplot of soil spectra in red and NIR space that forms a zero vegetation baseline from which vegetation can be more accurately measured.
Introduction
Vegetation indices are optical measures of vegetation canopy “greenness” used to quantify vegetation amounts and vigor. A VI measurement combines the chlorophyll-absorbing red spectral region (0.6–0.7 μm) with the nonabsorbing, leaf reflectance signal in the near-infrared(NIR; 0.7–1.3 μm) to provide a consistent and robust measure of area-averaged canopy photosynthetic capacity. The first vegetation indices were formed by spectral ratioing of the NIR with red band using field radiometers. The greater the amount or vigor of green vegetation present, the larger the contrast between NIR and red reflectances and the higher the resulting NIR/red ratio values, while a reduced...
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Huete, A. (2014). Vegetation Indices. In: Njoku, E.G. (eds) Encyclopedia of Remote Sensing. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-36699-9_187
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