Determination of Spatio-temporal Changes in Vegetation Cover By Using Different Vegetation Indices Based on Remote Sensing Data

Abstract

Abstract

Urbanization, industrialization and climatic changes, etc. cause changes in distribution and density of vegetation cover and plant health as well. Monitoring and analyzing these changes is very important in terms of management of natural resources, environmental protection and planning. Remote sensing is a very prevalent technology used in determination of spatial distribution, variety and density of vegetation cover. Vegetation cover is one of the elements that can be most easily and accurately extracted from satellite images. Therefore for the studies related with vegetation cover by satellite images, many vegetation indices were defined. In this study, Landsat 5-TM images dated October 1987 and September 2011 were used in order to examine the temporal change in Samsun-Turkey vegetation cover with the help of 14 vegetation indices including Ratio and NDVI from slope-based vegetation indices; PVI, PVI₁, PVI₂, PVI₃, SAVI, TSAVI₁, TSAVI₂, MSAVI₁, MSAVI₂, and WDVI from distance-based vegetation indices and PCA and TASSCAP from orthogonal transformation vegetation indices.