Methodological evaluation of vegetation indexes in land use and land cover (LULC) classification

Abstract

Vegetation indices are intended to emphasize the vegetation spectral behavior in relation to the soil and other terrestrial surface targets. The objective of this study was to evaluate the vegetation cover types present in the municipality of Campo Belo do Sul, Brazil, using data from five vegetation indices obtained through satellite images. In order to do so, calculations of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Soil-adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), Leaf Area Index (LAI), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) were performed using Quantum Gis software. The generated maps allowed the detection of the different vegetation cover classes, thus the results indicated that there is no specific vegetation index that best represents all the evaluated classes in the study, however, NDVI, EVI, and SAVI had good adjustments in the majority of the thematic classes.