Monitoring vegetation moisture using passive microwave and optical indices in the Dry Chaco Forest, Argentina

Abstract

Information about daily variations of vegetation moisture is of widespread interest to monitor vegetation stress and as a proxy to evapotranspiration. In this context, we evaluated optical and passive microwave remote sensing indices for estimating vegetation moisture content in the Dry Chaco Forest, Argentina. The three optical indices analyzed were the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and the Normalized Difference Infrared Index (NDII) and, for the microwave region the Frequency Index (FI). All these indices are mainly sensitive to leaf area index (LAI), but NDWI and NDII, and FI are also sensitive to leaf water content (LWC) and Canopy Water Content (CWC) respectively. Using optical and microwave radiative transfer models for the vegetation canopy, we estimated the range of values of LAI, LWC and CWC that can explain both NDWI/NDII and FI observations. Using a combination of simulations and microwave and optical observations, we proposed a two step approach to estimate leaf and canopy moisture content from NDWI, NDII and FI. We found that the short variation of LWC estimated from NDWI and NDII present a dynamic range of values which is difficult to explain from the biophysical point of view, and it is partially related to atmosphere contamination and canopy radiative transfer model limitations. Furthermore, the observed FI short term variations (~ 8 day) cannot be explained unless significant CWC variations are assumed. The CWC values estimated from FI present a short term variations possibly related to vegetation hydric stress.