Assessment of regional biomass-soil relationships using vegetation indexes

The development of photosynthetic active biomass in different ecological conditions, as indicated by normalized difference vegetation indices (NDVIs) is compared by performing a stratified sampling (based on soil associations) on data acquired over Indiana. Data from the NOAA-10 Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) were collected for the 1987 and 1988 growing seasons. An NDVI transformation was performed using the two optical bands of the sensor (0.58-0.68 mu m and 0.72-1.10 mu m). The NDVI is related to the amount of active photosynthetic biomass present on the ground. Statistical analysis of results indicate that land-cover types (forest, forest/pasture, and crops), soil texture, and soil water-holding capacity have an important effect on vegetation biomass changes as measured by AVHRR data.< >