Central Asian Countries Initiative for Land Management Multicountry Partnership Framework Support Project: Vegetation Phenology and Identification of Hotspots

Abstract

During a previous assignment, a set of baseline vegetation indicators was formulated and calculated using half of the MODIS NDVI dataset (MOD13Q1) acquired in 2008. The remaining half of the dataset has been acquired during the land cover mapping exercise. The baseline indicators have now been recalculated using the full set of MOD13Q1 data of 2008. In addition, phenological metrics have been estimated using the same dataset and added to the existing pool of indicators. These metrics provide temporal characterization of annual vegetation activities thus enabling monitoring of interannual changes in phenological events due to changes in climatic conditions. Further to the improvement of vegetation baseline indicators, hotspots have been identified based on a comparison of MODIS data of respectively 2000 and of 2008. Landsat ETM+ images of 2000c and 2005c are used to validate changes detected from MODIS images.