Welcome to the second section of this website. This section
will describe the process of testing several metrics that describe
the temporal dynamics of vegetation over an annual cycle.
Information on a related study is available
on the web.
These metrics have the potential to be used as input variables
to a global land cover classification. The tested metrics are
based on 1) the ratio between surface temperature and NDVI,
2) seasonal metrics derived from the NDVI temporal profile such as
length of growing season, 3) a rule-based approach that determines
cover type through a series of hierarchical trees based on surface
temperature and NDVI values, and 4) annual mean, maximum, minimum,
and amplitude values for all optical and thermal channels in the
AVHRR Pathfinder Land (PAL) data. These metrics were applied to
1984 PAL data at 8km resolution to derive a global land cover
classification produt using a decision tree classifier. The method
described in this website can be applied to AVHRR data from other
years and to data at higher spatial resolutions.
Included in this section:
For further information, contact:
Ruth DeFries
Laboratory for Global Remote Sensing Studies
Department of Geography
2181 LeFrak Hall
University of Maryland at College Park
College Park, MD 20742-8225 USA
email: rd63@umail.umd.edu