Estimating models of vegetation fractional coverage based on remote sensing images at different radiometric correction levels

The images of post atmospheric correction reflectance (PAC), top of atmosphere reflectance (TOA), and digital number (DN) of a SPOT5 HRG remote sensing image of Nanjing, China were used to derive four vegetation indices (VIs), that is, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), transformed vegetation index (TVI), soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI), and modified soil-adjusted vegetation index (MSAVI). Based on these VIs and the vegetation fractional coverage (VFC) data obtained from field measurements, thirty-six VI-VFC relationship models were established. The results showed that cubic polynomial models based on NDVI and TVI from PAC were the best, followed by those based on SAVI and MSAVI from DN, with their accuracies being slightly higher than those of the former two models when VFC>0.8. The accuracies of these four models were higher in medium densely vegetated areas (VFC = 0.4–0.8) than in sparsely vegetated areas (VFC = 0–0.4). All the models could be used elsewhere via the introduction of a calibration model. In VI-VFC modeling, using VIs derived from different radiometric correction levels of remote sensing images could help explore and show valuable information from remote sensing data and thus improve the accuracy of VFC estimation.