Time–series Satellite Data Analysis for Assessment of Vegetation Cover in Mongolia

Abstract

Vegetation cover and its dynamics and trends are of interest for many: starting from herders, cropfarmers and wildlife managers to decision makers, planners and wide profile of scientists. Discussedhere is an attempt to assess the vegetation temporal dynamics using time series NOAA satellite 1 km datathat cover the territory of Mongolia in the period of 1989 – 2002. Normalized Differences VegetationIndex (NDVI) and Departure from Average methods were employed to assess the vegetation cover statusand its changes and trends over 14 years. The author has used raw data from the NOAA satellite activearchive for this study and processed through Erdas Imagine and ArcGIS software packages. This studycan be useful tool for land, pasture, wildlife managers and others interested in vegetation cover changesover vast areas of Mongolia and valuable in case where lack of vegetation data