Vegetation Dynamics Assessment–A Case Study of Visakhapatnam Metro Region, India

Abstract

Changes in vegetation cover affects local climatic conditions and brings changes surface biomass.Vegetation change studies became significant indicators for global climate change, drought conditions and to study crop health. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), which is anexcellent indicator for measuring vegetation health, stressed vegetation anddeforestation and droughtconditions. Time series of NDVI will give crop growth profiles .Satellite observations are used to produce global scale vegetation cover statistics.These NDVI based statistics bring comprehensive geographical and seasonal patternsof vegetation and surface energy balance. NDVI derived from remote-sensing data by measuring reflectance values in RED and Infrared regions,using Google Earth Engine. Sentinel-1(ESA) and Landsat8 data used to derive temporal variability of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The study was carried out for a period of 2008, 2013 and 2019 in VMRDA region. Studybrings out vegetation statistics like vegetation cover changes, deforestation,and crop health in the study area. Thus,NDVI has a multidimensional indicator and has also been used for land cover classification, drought monitoring, vegetation health, crop stress, land degradation and forest carbon dynamics.