Comparison of eMODIS and MOD/MYD13A2 NDVI products during 2012–2014 spring green-up periods in Alaska and northwest Canada

Accurate monitoring of vegetation dynamics is required to understand the inter-annual variability and long term trends in terrestrial carbon exchange in tundra and boreal ecoregions. In western North America, two Normalized Vegetation Index (NDVI) products based on spectral reflectance data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) are available. The MOD/MYD13A2 NDVI product is available as a 16-day composite product in a sinusoidal projection as global hdf tiles. The eMODIS Alaska NDVI product is available as a 7-day composite geotif product in a regional equal area conic projection covering Alaska and the entire Yukon River Basin. These two NDVI products were compared for the 2012–2014 late May–late June spring green-up periods in Alaska and the Yukon Territory. Relative to the MOD/MYD13A2 NDVI product, it is likely that the eMODIS NDVI product contained more cloud-contaminated NDVI values. For example, the MOD/MYD13A2 product flagged substantially fewer pixels as “good quality” in each 16-day composite period compared to the corresponding MODIS Alaska NDVI product from a 7-day composite period. During the spring green-up period, when field-based NDVI increases, the eMODIS NDVI product averaged 43 percent of pixels that declined by at least 0.05 NDVI between 2 composite periods, consistent with cloud-contamination problems, while the MOD/MYD13A2 NDVI averaged only 6 percent of pixels. Based on a cloudy Landsat-8 scene, the eMODIS compositing process selected 23 percent pixels, while the MOD/MYD13A2 compositing process selected less than 0.003 percent pixels. Based on the results, it appears that the MOD/MYD13A2 NDVI product is superior for scientific applications based on NDVI phenology in the tundra and boreal regions of northwestern North America.