An evaluation of prediction accuracy and stability of a new vegetation index for estimating vegetation leaf area index

LAI is a crucial parameter and a basic quantity indicating crop growth situation. Empirical models comprising spectral indices (SIs) and LAI have widely been applied to the retrieval of LAI. SI method already has exhibited feasibility in the estimation of vegetation LAI. However, it is largely supject to the inconsistency from different remote sensors which have varied specifications, such as spectral response features and central wavelength. To address this issue, a new vegetation index (VIUPD) based on the universal pattern decomposition method was proposed. It is expressed as a linear sum of the pattern decomposition coefficients and features in sensor-independency. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prediction accuracy and stability of VIUPD for estimating LAI, compared with three other common-used SIs. In this study, the measured spectra were resampled to simulated TM multispectral data and Hyperion hyperspectral data respectively, using the Gaussian spectral response function. The three typical SIs chosen were including NDVI, TVI and MCARI, which were constructed with the sensitive bands to the LAI. Finally, the regression equations between four selected SIs and LAI were established. The best index evaluated using the simulated TM data was VIUPD which exhibits the best correlation with LAI (R²=0.92) followed by NDVI (R²=0.80). For the simulated Hyperion data, VIUPD again ranks first with R²=0.89, followed by TVI (R2=0.63). Meanwhile, the consistence of VIUPD also was studied based on simulated TM and Hyperion sensor data and the R² reached to 0.95. It is demonstrated that VIUPD has the best accuracy and stability to estimate LAI of winter wheat whether using simulated TM data or Hyperion data, which reaffirms that VIUPD is comparatively sensor independent. © 2014 SPIE.