Vegetation indices: Advances made in biomass estimation and vegetation monitoring in the last 30 years

Abstract

During the last 30 years Vegetation Indices (VI) have been extensively used for tracing and monitoring vegetation conditions, such as health, growth levels, production, water and nutrients stress, etc. In this paper the characteristics of over 20 VIs based on the VNIR spectrum are described in order to provide the reader with adequate material to form a picture of their nature and purpose. It is not, though, a review article due to the fact that a huge volume of work exists all over the world and a simple lining up of the related papers would not contribute to an understanding of the usefulness of VIs. A limited number of review work is included, together with research results from various operational and research applications of VI for wheat damage assessment in Northern Greece.