Study on spectral indices for crop growth monitoring

The objective of this paper is to determine the suitable spectral bands for monitoring growth status change during a long period. The long-term ground-level reflectance spectra as well as LAI and biomass were obtained in xiaotangshan area, Beijing, 2001. The narrow-band NDVI type spectral indices by all possible two bands were calculated their correlation coefficients R$^2$ with biomass and LAI. The best NDVIs must have higher R$^2$ with both biomass and LAI. The reasonable band centers and band widths were determined by a systematically increasing bandwidth centered over a wavelength. In addition, the first 19 bands of MODIS were simulated and investigated. Each developed spectral indices was then validated by the biomass and LAI time series using the generalized vector angle. It turned out that six new NDVI type indices within 750-1400nm were developed. NDVI(811_10,957_10) and NDVI(962_10,802_10) performed best. No satisfactory conventional NDVI formed by red and NIR bands were found effective. MODIS_NDVI(band19, band17) and MODIS_NDVI(band19, band2) were much better than MODIS_NDVI(band2,band1) for growth monitoring.