Advanced vegetation indices optimized for up-coming sensors: Design, performance, and applications

This paper describes the implementation of a physical and mathematical appr oach to designing advanced vegetation indices optimized for future sensors operating in the solar domain such as the medium resolution imaging spectro meter (MERIS), the global imager (GLI), and the VEGETATION instrument, and proposes an initial evaluation of such indices, These optimized indices add ress sensor-specific issues such as dependencies with respect to the actual spectral response of the sensor as well as the natural sensitivity of remo te sensing measurements to illumination and observing geometry, to atmosphe ric absorption and scattering effects, and to soil color or brightness chan ges, The derivation of vegetation index formulae optimized to estimate the same vegetation property fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active rad iation (FAPAR) from data generated by different sensors allows the comparis on of their relative performances compared with existing vegetation indices , both from a theoretical and experimental point of view, and permits the c reation of global products, as well as the constitution of long time series from multiple sensors.