Modeling vegetation amount using bandwise regression and ecological site descriptions as an alternative to vegetation indices

Abstract

Ecological site descriptions (ESDs) based on soil maps, Landsat 7 ETM+ band values, and vegetation index data from 12 scenes were used as predictive variables in linear regression estimates of total biomass using field data from five Montana ranches. Bandwise regression explained the most variability (53%) when ESDs were not included, followed by tasseled cap components (51 %), the soil adjusted vegetation index (44%), and the normalized difference vegetation index (41%). ESDs improved the amount of variability explained to 66% for bandwise regression and 65% using tasseled cap components. Copyright © 2007 by V.H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved.