Monitoring and modeling land surface dynamics in Bermejo River Basin, Argentina: Time series analysis of MODIS and AMSR-E data

In this paper, we show that MODIS NDVI and AMSR-E microwave vegetation indexes (MVI) data can be used to monitor land surface phenology in the Bermejo River Basin. For this purpose, the statistical nature of the study area´s NDVI and MVI time series was analyzed. For NDVI, widely known time series models were tested and modified. NDVI temporal variation trends show functional forms that originate from the general annual performance of land surface phenology. Using these functional forms, a classification scheme is proposed. Furthermore, we also explored the possibility to use MVIs in order to improve the classification using assumptions about canopy structure that influence vegetation emissivity and opacity.