Use of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to Assess Land Degradation at Multiple Scales. Current Status, Future Trends, and Practical Considerations ( Front matter)

This report examines the scientific basis for the use of remotely sensed data, particularly the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), for the assessment of land degradation at different scales and for a range of applications, including resilience of agroecosystems. Evidence is drawn from a wide range of investigations, primarily from the scientific peer-reviewed literature but also non-journal sources. The literature review has been corroborated by interviews with leading specialists in the field. The use of continuous time series of global NDVI data, based on the NOAA AVHRR sensor, developed rapidly in the early 1990s. Since then, data processing and techniques for analyses of the data have improved significantly. Developments in data quality screening, geometric correction, calibration between sensors, atmospheric and solar zenith corrections, cloud screening, and data mosaicking have enabled the production of several databases of global NDVI data of high quality that are freely accessible over the Internet. The spatial resolution of these datasets ranges from coarse (8–1 km) to medium (250 m).
Even if there is no alternative to remotely sensed data for global and continental scale monitoring of vegetation dynamics, the technique is not without weaknesses.
The report reviews the use of NDVI for a range of themes related to land degradation. Drought monitoring and early warning systems use NDVI data and have developed fully operational systems for data dissemination and analysis . Desertification processes at the global, continental, and subcontinental scale have been studied intensively in the last two decades; a key finding is that most of the world’s drylands show a trend of increasing NDVI.
(Read more following the link to http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-24112-8)

Keywordsnormalized-difference vegetation index (NDVI), land degradation assessment, monitoring and evaluation, monitoring and reporting, agroecosystems, resilience, land degradation mapping