Spatial and temporal analysis of MODIS EVI and TRMM 3B43 rainfall retrievals in Australia

Precipitation is a major source of freshwater in water cycle. Accurate information and spatial details of water availability are important to arid and semi-arid areas. This study examined the relationships between vegetation cover and rainfall variability in Australia from 2000 to 2008. Vegetation index can be treating as a proxy of precipitation. By linear regression of the EVI values to the rainfall data in various spatial and temporal scales, relations between EVI values and rainfall amount can be establish and used to predict cumulative spatial rainfall amount at relatively high resolution. This relation can help to develop a new methodology that uses finer scale EVI patterns to estimate precipitation in semi-arid and arid areas. Analysis results showed that EVI was a good proxy for precipitation in 0.25° resolution. Seasonal and principle component analysis of EVI and rainfall indicated that there were strong seasonal correlation between EVI and rainfall.