Use of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to Assess Land Degradation at Multiple Scales

Genesis Tambang Yengoh is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Lundy University Centre for Sustainability Studies in Sweden. His research involves uses of remote sensing and GIS to understand the implications of large-scale land use dynamics on the flow of, access to, and use of natural resources at the household and landscape level. David Dent is an Honorary Fellow of Lund Centre for Sustainability Studies. Previously, he served as Director of ISRIC-World Soil Information. He consults in scientific, practical and policy aspects of use and management of land resources to governments, international organizations, multinationals and private companies, working in every continent. Lennart Olsson is the Founding Director of LUCSUS – Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies. He serves as Scientific Director and Examiner of the International Masters Program LUMES. He teaches courses on land use, environmental modeling, water issues, natural resources and land degradation. Anna Tengberg is an Environment and Development Consultant. She also serves as a Research Associate at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden’s Environmental Economics Unit as well as an Adjunct Professor at the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies. Compton James Tucker III is a Physical Scientist at the Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, USA. He was among the first researchers to employ coarse-resolution satellite data to exploit the time domain for studying global photosynthesis on land, determining land cover, monitoring droughts, providing famine early warning, and predicting ecologically-coupled disease outbreaks.

• Introduction.- The potential for assessment of land degradation by remote sensing.- Applications of NDVI for land degradation assessment.- Limits to the use of NDVI in land degradation assessment.- Key issues in the use of NDVI for land degradation assessment.- Development of land degradation assessments.- Experts’ opinions on the use of NDVI for land degradation assessment.- Main global NDVI datasets and databases, and software.- Country-level use of satellite products to detect and map land degradation processes.- Challenges to the use of NDVI in land degradation assessments.- Recommendations for future application of NDVI.- Conclusion.- Appendices.