A monitoring indicator system for remote sensing of grassland vegetation growth and suitability evaluation – a case study of the Xilingol Grassland in Inner Mongolia, China.

Grassland vegetation growth directly reflects plant growth conditions, and growth processes are an important component of ecological status assessments of grasslands and can provide timely guidance for agricultural production. In this study, the Xilingol Grassland in Inner Mongolia was used as the study area, and a monitoring indicator system for the remote sensing of grassland vegetation growth was established based on 16 days of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data and ground sampling data, which were used to assess the suitability of the indicator system. A monitoring indicator system for the remote sensing of grassland vegetation that included the modified growth index (MGI)-normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), MGI-enhanced vegetation index (EVI), growth index (GI)-NDVI, and GI-EVI was established by using the year 2000 as the base year, two vegetation indices and difference and normalized difference methods. A model for estimating the ground growth (g) was then constructed by using expert opinion scoring and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the weights of vegetation coverage (c), height (h), and yield (y) in the ground plots, with the model calculated as follows:g = 0.2543c + 0.1848 h + 0.5609y. Additionally, the ground growth value was calculated according to the ground growth model, and the values obtained from the remote-sensing indicators in the corresponding region were subjected to a correlation analysis based on this partition. The remote-sensing growth indices suitable for temperate steppe, meadow steppe, and desert steppe regions were GI-EVI, MGI-NDVI, and GI-NDVI, respectively. Finally, vegetation growth in the Xilingol Grassland was evaluated using the optimal remote-sensing GI for each area, and the results indicated that the areas with the greatest growth improvement occurred in the temperate steppe region followed by the meadow steppe region, whereas vegetation growth improvement was insignificant in the desert steppe region. The results of this study have important significance for the economic development and ecological environmental improvement of pastoral and semi-pastoral regions and can be used to determine the optimal use and scientific management of grasslands. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]