What is the most popular vegetation index studied in this week?

Satellite data has become an integral part of modern agricultural management to keep track of crop progress. Some
satellite data, however, also can foretell how a crop will perform in the future, offering valuable insights to a wide
range of industry players. Vegetation indices are one of the more popular and extensively studied products of remote
sensing and use transformations of spectral bands of the electromagnetic spectrum that are measured as reflectance
from the Earth's surface by satellites. Vegetation indices are designed to maximize sensitivity to the vegetation
characteristics while minimizing confounding factors such as soil background reflectance, directional, or atmospheric
effects.
NDVI is probably the most important of the satellite data. By reading infrared light waves reflected from plants, NDVI
can signal stresses to plant health, such as oncoming drought, as much as two weeks before problems are visible to
the naked eye. Many agricultural industry participants can benefit from such advance alerts. Farmers can increase
irrigation or add crop protection to forestall a pest infestation. And physical traders, processors, and food and beverage
companies could seek out alternative supplies or hedge their positions. NDVI also can reveal positive indications
about a crop, providing a heads-up to market participants, logistics companies, and others to prepare for a big harvest.
Another type of satellite data, called evapotranspiration (ET), also sends early-warning signals about plants, based on
measures of moisture evaporation and transpiration. But ET is available only on a monthly basis, much less frequent
than the eight-day reports on NDVI. NDVI is the key input to Gro’s machine-learning-based yield models. It plays a
decisive role in Gro’s yield forecasts for corn in the US and Argentina, soybeans in the US, and wheat in countries
including Ukraine, Russia, India, and the US.
What is NDVI?
• Early space exploration quickly led to atmospheric and meteorological studies. NASA in 1972 launched the
Earth Resources Technology Satellite, the forerunner to Landsat, the world’s longest-running satellite
imagery program. This first satellite was able to distinguish between visible red and near-infrared reflectance
bands, which allowed it to identify vegetation, soil, water, and other features.
• Light from the sun is present as visible light (reds, greens, and blues) and light not visible to our eyes (infrared
and ultraviolet). These can be absorbed, transmitted, or reflected by an object. In healthy plants, most of the
visible light is absorbed for use in photosynthesis, and much of the near-infrared radiation (NIR) is reflected.
However, if the plant is stressed, because of dehydration, for instance, it reflects less NIR and absorbs less
light in the visible spectrum, specifically in the red portion, since the plant is not using photosynthesis as
efficiently.
• Using these assumptions, researchers formulated the so-called normalized difference vegetation index, or
NDVI. The equation looks like this:
NDVI = (NIR - Red)/ (NIR + Red).
• Simply put, NDVI measures plant greenness, a direct measurement of chlorophyll content and photosynthetic
activity, which is a basic but reliable way to gauge plant health and biomass, or yield. Using the simple
equation above, which returns values between 0 and 1, a higher value represents a healthier plant. Numerous
satellites capture light at these wavelengths. They differ by factors such as pixel size, or how much area is
 covered in a single image, and by how often the satellite returns to the same region, known as revisit time.
Gro chose to use the MODIS sensor aboard the TERRA and AQUA satellite, which has a nominal spatial
resolution of 250 meters by 250 meters. It also has a daily revisit time, which is aggregated to eight- and 16-
day products in order to allow for cloud cover.
Yield Model VIP
• Traditional survey-based yield modeling is slowly being supplanted by remote-sensing techniques as satellite
technology continues to improve. Changes in crop condition can be detected more quickly using NDVI,
which reads near-infrared light waves. Crop stress from pests, diseases, drought, flooding, and other factors
won’t immediately be picked up in the visible-light spectrum but will be reflected in the NIR spectrum.
• Simply looking at a map of NDVI readings, however, can often be misleading, partly because the data doesn’t
distinguish between planted crops and non-target vegetation, such as surrounding trees. Identifying the exact
areas where crops are growing, called crop masking, is a critical first step, and NDVI plays an important role
in this process, as well.
• Yield models contain a variety of climate inputs such as temperature and precipitation that provide valuable
insights about growing conditions. Other variables, like evapotranspiration, reveal information about the
condition of the crop and soil moisture. But NDVI is the only variable, in addition to latitude and longitude,
that is included in every one of Gro’s yield models. It is also the only yield model variable that directly
measures plant activity, in this case photosynthesis, which ultimately determines yield. Other variables in our
yield models act as proxies for plant health, but don’t directly measure production of biomass.
• NDVI is most effective beginning in the pre-peak season of crop growth and continuing through harvest.
Earlier in the season, when most crops are just starting to show shoots, NDVI doesn’t provide much useful
information because it isn’t reading as much surface area.
• To be sure, NDVI also is less effective with certain crops. In production of ratoon crops like sugarcane, for
example, large fields of shoots are cut and harvested over four- to 12-month periods while the roots are left
to regenerate. This practice results in significant spatial and temporal variation in growth over sugarcane
acreage, which presents a challenge to monitoring yield using NDVI.
NDVI satellite data, a core part of Gro’s data platform, is a powerful indicator of plant health, detecting positive
signals and plant stressors as much as two weeks before such issues are apparent to the naked eye. Simple maps of
NDVI readings aren’t very helpful, partly because they fail to distinguish between crops and extraneous vegetation.
With proper masking, however, NDVI becomes a vital component of reliable crop yield models, along with other
variables such as soil moisture, temperature, and precipitation. Industry players across the agricultural sector,
including traders and food, beverage, and chemical companies, can benefit from building predictive models which
incorporate NDVI to better inform their decision-making.