A shadow- eliminated vegetation index (SEVI) for removal of self and cast shadow effects on vegetation in rugged terrains

Abstract

The effect of terrain shadow, including the self and cast shadows, is one of the main obstacles for accurate retrieval of vegetation parameters by remote sensing in rugged terrains. A shadow- eliminated vegetation index (SEVI) was developed, which was computed from only red and near-infrared top-of-atmosphere reflectance without other heterogeneous data and topographic correction. After introduction of the conceptual model and feature analysis of conventional wavebands, the SEVI was constructed by ratio vegetation index (RVI), shadow vegetation index (SVI) and adjustment factor (f (Δ)). Then three methods were used to validate the SEVI accuracy in elimination of terrain shadow effects, including relative error analysis, correlation analysis between the cosine of solar incidence angle (cosi) and vegetation indices, and comparison analysis between SEVI and conventional vegetation indices with topographic correction. The validation results based on 532 samples showed that the SEVI relative errors for self and cast shadows were 4.32% and 1.51% respectively. The coefficient of determination between cosi and SEVI was only 0.032 and the coefficient of variation (std/mean) for SEVI was 12.59%. The results indicate that the proposed SEVI effectively eliminated the effect of terrain shadows and achieved similar or better results than conventional vegetation indices with topographic correction.