Satellite Applications for Detecting Vegetation Phenology - Satellite-based Applications on Climate Change - page 253

Chapter 17
Satellite Applications for Detecting
Vegetation Phenology
Min Li and John J. Qu
Abstract Vegetation phenology describing the seasonal cycle of plants is currently
one of the main concerns in the study of climate change and carbon balance
estimation in ecosystems. Satellite-derived information has been demonstrated to
be an important source for detecting vegetation phenology. A variety of methods
have been developed to generate phenological metrics from satellite measurements
varying from empirically, simple threshold of vegetation index to automated,
elaborate logistic model. Each method provides certain advantages and paves the
way for the success of satellite-derived vegetation phenology. The vegetation
phenology derived from satellite measurements has been utilized for tracking
vegetation dynamics, invasive species, and land use changes as well as assessing
crop conditions, drought severity, and wildfire risk. Satellite sensors have their
specific characteristics of temporal and spatial resolution, spatial coverage, and data
quality and archive history. Each satellite takes advantages of its respective
strengths to provide certain phenological applications. Despite the insights gained
form satellite observations of vegetation phenology, the scale problem brings a big
challenge for comparing satellite-derived vegetation phenology and ground
records. In the future, more detailed information of ground records together with
phenophases of individual species could be integrated to reflect the canopy phenol-
ogy and compared with the satellite-derived phenology. The well-validated vege-
tation phenology from satellite measurements will contribute to the improvement in
ecosystem process models.