Multiscale geostatistical analysis of sampled above-ground biomass and vegetation index products from HJ-1A/B, Landsat, and MODIS

The spatial scaling of satellite data is faced widely and inevitably in remote sensing applications for the spatial heterogeneity of ecosystems. In this study variogram analysis was used to evaluate the spatial variability and the scale effects of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from Huanjing (that is, environment satellite sensor in Chinese, HJ-1A/B), Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 250 m, 500 m, 1 km, and the field sampled above-ground biomass (AGB). Results show that the overall spatial variance decreased when pixel size increased from 30 m (HJ and TM) to 1 km (MODIS) at the area of 10 km × 10 km. The value of 1 or 3×3 pixels approximately represent the above-ground biomass from the cyclic sampling design. This indicates that the HJ data can be used to retrieve the biomass and its scaling-up for its performance comparable with Landsat TM data, though both sensors were applicable than that of MODIS. Further the method to scale-up is a fundament approach to the validation and application of MODIS products and ecosystem model’s outputs on regional scale.

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