A comparative study on the applicability and effectiveness of NSVI and NDVI for estimating fractional vegetation cover based on multi-source remote sensing image

Fractional vegetation coverage (FVC) is an important ecological parameter reflecting the growth of regional plants. Existing FVC estimation is often based on vegetation indices, especially the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). However, NDVI can be oversaturated and easily affected by problems such as ‘shadow’ in images, which leads to a decrease in the precision of FVC estimation. In this study, the Normalized Shaded Vegetation Index (NSVI) was used to comprehensively compare the estimation ability of FVC with NDVI, and the differences in FVC estimation ability between NSVI and NDVI were explored. Based on two dimensions of ‘bright’ and ‘shadow’ hierarchies and FVC ranks, four evaluation systems of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), index range, statistical model and dimidiate pixel model were selected from Sentinel-2A MSI, Landsat-8 OLI and Resource-1-02D (ZY1-02D) images and covered a variety of topographic landscapes. The results showed that: (1) the ability of NSVI to resist soil background is slightly smaller than NDVI; (2) the range of NSVI and NDVI in hyperspectral images is slightly larger than multispectral images, and the ability of NSVI to detect vegetation information in medium-high-rank and high-rank FVC areas has obvious advantages; (3) in the same kind of regression model, the goodness of fit of NSVI, NDVI and FVC was slightly higher in bright areas than in shaded areas, and the goodness of fit of the five regression models obtained from NSVI showed a significant advantage in bright areas compared with NDVI, with the best fit of the cubic curve model; (4) the estimation accuracy of the dimidiate pixel model based on NSVI and NDVI is slightly higher in bright areas than in shaded areas, and the estimation ability of NSVI is slightly better than that of NDVI in bright areas with medium-high-rank and high-rank FVC. NSVI and NDVI have their own advantages in SNR, index range, statistical model and dimidiate pixel model, so it is suggested that when remote sensing estimation of FVC is carried out, NSVI should be preferred in medium-high-rank and high-rank FVC areas, and NDVI should be preferred in low-rank FVC areas in shaded areas.