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Fractional Vegetation Cover

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Remote Sensing of Land Use and Land Cover in Mountain Region

Abstract

Fractional vegetation cover (FVC) is an important parameter in the study of ecosystem balance, soil erosion, and climate change and is often used to evaluate and monitor vegetation degradation and desertification. Remote sensing provides the only feasible way to estimate FVC at regional and global scales. In the present study, an empirical model of FVC estimation is developed for central Tibetan Plateau (TP) based on the relationships between vegetation indices from Terra/Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and corresponding field measurements derived from digital camera, which is followed by in-depth analysis on the spatial distribution of vegetation coverage using proposed method. Study shows that a linear relationship exists between vegetation coverage from the field observation and MODIS NDVI with coefficient of determination of R 2 = 0.90, which is slightly better than MODIS SAVI performance with R 2 = 0.89 and is an optimal regression model for FVC estimation. Vegetation coverage ranges 20–90% in the most part of central TP, presenting moderate to high as a whole, and generally decreases from east to west with strong regional differences due to discrepancies in land-cover types, plant species, topography and water resources availability, and so on.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tibet Institute of Plateau Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, Tibet Meteorological Bureau, Lhasa, China

    Duo Chu

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  1. Duo Chu
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Chu, D. (2020). Fractional Vegetation Cover. In: Remote Sensing of Land Use and Land Cover in Mountain Region. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7580-4_10

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