Biotech Studies 2014, Vol 23, Num, 1     (Pages: 014-021)

Assessment of Rangeland Vegetation Condition from Time Series

Ediz ÜNAL 1 ,Ali MERMER 1 ,Hakan YILDIZ 1

1 Central Research Institute for Field Crops, Ankara, Turkey - The great spatial extent of rangelands has prompted a need for more efficient and cost effective management tools. Satellite based normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data offers improved and timely monitoring of rangeland vegetation. Since elevation is one of the factors affecting vegetation phenology, it should be considered when assessing vegetation status of rangelands. In this study, rangeland condition was determined by classifying an elevation-normalized NDVI image (EN-NDVI) produced by a conditional rule approach based on elevation data representing active growing season of rangelands in whole project area. A supervised classification algorithm was used to obtain four rangeland conditions called `very good`, `good`, `moderate` and `poor`. The results revealed that the coverage of each range condition was; 10.02% `very good`, 20.55% `good`, 31.83% `moderate` and 37.60% `poor`. General classification accuracy and Kappa statistic values were 52.5% and 0.30 respectively. Keywords : Classification, Elevation, NDVI, Rangeland, SPOT-VEGETATION