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Anomalous Variations of NDVI for a Non-Vegetated Urban Industrial Area of Gumi, Korea

Received: 2 December 2014     Accepted: 9 December 2014     Published: 18 December 2014
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Abstract

NDVI is often used to investigate how vegetation contributes to the surface urban heat islands (SUHI) effect. Generally, NDVIs obtained for partially vegetated or built-up areas have been found to be less than 0.4. However, anomalous NDVIs that are inconsistent with established concepts and relationships are frequently obtained for non-vegetated urban land cover. It is possible that these anomalous NDVIs have been distorted by the surface colors and patterns of rooftops. Therefore, we obtained NDVIs for an urban industrial area of Gumi, South Korea, and investigated how these NDVIs were affected by such surface colors and patterns. By assessing 148 factory rooftops, obtained NDVIs indeed showed a tendency to be affected by the surface colors and patterns of rooftops. A color classification of white, blue, purple, and red revealed that blue- and purple-colored rooftops resulted in higher NDVIs than other rooftops. Moreover, these rooftops were sometimes misidentified as forest and vegetation. The color tone, affected by brightness intensity, also contributed to the NDVIs obtained for blue- and purple-colored rooftops. Extreme cases showed that NDVIs obtained for rooftop surfaces could attain values indicative of dense vegetation (i.e., NDVIs ≥ 0.6), when blue-colored rooftops were combined with complex surface patterns that generated more shadow. From these results, we concluded that the established relationship between LST and NDVI is likely to be invalid for non-vegetated urban industrial areas, and that NDVIs obtained for such areas should be used with caution, particularly in studies of the SUHI effect.

Published in American Journal of Remote Sensing (Volume 2, Issue 6)
DOI 10.11648/j.ajrs.20140206.11
Page(s) 44-49
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2014. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Anomalous NDVI, Surface Temperature, Infrared Imaging, Urban, UHI, Surface, Landsat, Monitoring

References
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[2] C.P. Lo, D.A. Quattrochi, and J.C. Luvall. Application of high resolution thermal infrared remote sensing and GIS to assess the urban heat island effect. Int. J. Remote Sens., vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 287-304, Feb. 1997.
[3] J.S. Wilson, M. Glay, E. Martin, D. Stuckey, and K. Vedder-Risch. Evaluating environmental influences of zoning in urban ecosystems with remote sensing. Remote Sens. Environ., 86, no. 3, pp. 303-321, Aug. 2003.
[4] A.A. Van De Griend and M. Owe. On the relationship between thermal emissivity and the normalized difference vegetation index for natural surfaces. Int. J. Remote Sens., vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 1119-1131, May 1993.
[5] E. Valor and V. Caselles., Mapping land surface emissivity from NDVI: Application to European, African, and South American areas. Remote Sens. Environ., vol. 57, no. 3, pp. 167-184, Sep. 1996.
[6] J.A. Sobrino, N. Raissouni, and Z.L, Li. A comparative study of land surface emissivity retrieval from NOAA data. Remote Sens. Environ., vol. 75, no. 75, pp. 256-266, Feb. 2001.
[7] J.A. Sobrino, J.C. Jiménez-Muñoz, G. Soria, M. Romaguera, L. Guanter, J. Moreno, A. Plaza, and P. Martinez. Land surface emissivity retrieval from different VNIR and TIR sensors. IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens., vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 316-327, Feb. 2008.
[8] J.C. Jiménez-Muñoz, J.A. Sobrino, A. Gillespie, D. Sabol, and W.T. Gustafson. Improved land surface emissivities over agricultural areas using ASTER NDVI, Remote Sens. Environ., vol. 103, no. 4, pp. 474-487, Aug. 2006.
[9] K.P. Gallo, and J.D. Tarpley. The comparison of vegetation index and surface temperature composites for urban heat-island analysis. Int. J. Remote Sens., vol. 17, no. 15, pp. 3071-3076, Oct. 1996.
[10] F. Yuan and M.E. Bauer. Comparison of impervious surface area and normalized difference vegetation index as indicators of surface urban heat island effects in Landsat imagery. Remote Sens. Environ., vol. 106, no. 3, pp. 375-376, Feb. 2007.
[11] D. Sun and M. Kafatos. Note on the NDVI-LST relationship and the use of temperature-related drought indices over North America. Geophys. Res. Lett., vol. 34, no. 24, pp. L24406-L24500, Jan. 2007.
[12] K.J. Bhang and S.S. Park. Evaluation of the surface temperature variation with surface settings on the urban heat island in Seoul, Korea, using Landsat-7 and SPOT. IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett., vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 708-712, Oct. 2009.
[13] D.A. Roberts, M. Gardner, R. Church, S. Ustin, G. Scheer, and R.O. Green, R.O. Mapping chaparral in the Santa Monica Mountains using multiple endmember spectral mixture models. Remote Sens. Environ., vol. 65, no. 3, pp. 267-279, Sep. 1998.
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  • APA Style

    Kon Joon Bhang. (2014). Anomalous Variations of NDVI for a Non-Vegetated Urban Industrial Area of Gumi, Korea. American Journal of Remote Sensing, 2(6), 44-49. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajrs.20140206.11

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    ACS Style

    Kon Joon Bhang. Anomalous Variations of NDVI for a Non-Vegetated Urban Industrial Area of Gumi, Korea. Am. J. Remote Sens. 2014, 2(6), 44-49. doi: 10.11648/j.ajrs.20140206.11

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    AMA Style

    Kon Joon Bhang. Anomalous Variations of NDVI for a Non-Vegetated Urban Industrial Area of Gumi, Korea. Am J Remote Sens. 2014;2(6):44-49. doi: 10.11648/j.ajrs.20140206.11

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ajrs.20140206.11,
      author = {Kon Joon Bhang},
      title = {Anomalous Variations of NDVI for a Non-Vegetated Urban Industrial Area of Gumi, Korea},
      journal = {American Journal of Remote Sensing},
      volume = {2},
      number = {6},
      pages = {44-49},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ajrs.20140206.11},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajrs.20140206.11},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajrs.20140206.11},
      abstract = {NDVI is often used to investigate how vegetation contributes to the surface urban heat islands (SUHI) effect. Generally, NDVIs obtained for partially vegetated or built-up areas have been found to be less than 0.4. However, anomalous NDVIs that are inconsistent with established concepts and relationships are frequently obtained for non-vegetated urban land cover. It is possible that these anomalous NDVIs have been distorted by the surface colors and patterns of rooftops. Therefore, we obtained NDVIs for an urban industrial area of Gumi, South Korea, and investigated how these NDVIs were affected by such surface colors and patterns. By assessing 148 factory rooftops, obtained NDVIs indeed showed a tendency to be affected by the surface colors and patterns of rooftops. A color classification of white, blue, purple, and red revealed that blue- and purple-colored rooftops resulted in higher NDVIs than other rooftops. Moreover, these rooftops were sometimes misidentified as forest and vegetation. The color tone, affected by brightness intensity, also contributed to the NDVIs obtained for blue- and purple-colored rooftops. Extreme cases showed that NDVIs obtained for rooftop surfaces could attain values indicative of dense vegetation (i.e., NDVIs ≥ 0.6), when blue-colored rooftops were combined with complex surface patterns that generated more shadow. From these results, we concluded that the established relationship between LST and NDVI is likely to be invalid for non-vegetated urban industrial areas, and that NDVIs obtained for such areas should be used with caution, particularly in studies of the SUHI effect.},
     year = {2014}
    }
    

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  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - Anomalous Variations of NDVI for a Non-Vegetated Urban Industrial Area of Gumi, Korea
    AU  - Kon Joon Bhang
    Y1  - 2014/12/18
    PY  - 2014
    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajrs.20140206.11
    DO  - 10.11648/j.ajrs.20140206.11
    T2  - American Journal of Remote Sensing
    JF  - American Journal of Remote Sensing
    JO  - American Journal of Remote Sensing
    SP  - 44
    EP  - 49
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
    SN  - 2328-580X
    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajrs.20140206.11
    AB  - NDVI is often used to investigate how vegetation contributes to the surface urban heat islands (SUHI) effect. Generally, NDVIs obtained for partially vegetated or built-up areas have been found to be less than 0.4. However, anomalous NDVIs that are inconsistent with established concepts and relationships are frequently obtained for non-vegetated urban land cover. It is possible that these anomalous NDVIs have been distorted by the surface colors and patterns of rooftops. Therefore, we obtained NDVIs for an urban industrial area of Gumi, South Korea, and investigated how these NDVIs were affected by such surface colors and patterns. By assessing 148 factory rooftops, obtained NDVIs indeed showed a tendency to be affected by the surface colors and patterns of rooftops. A color classification of white, blue, purple, and red revealed that blue- and purple-colored rooftops resulted in higher NDVIs than other rooftops. Moreover, these rooftops were sometimes misidentified as forest and vegetation. The color tone, affected by brightness intensity, also contributed to the NDVIs obtained for blue- and purple-colored rooftops. Extreme cases showed that NDVIs obtained for rooftop surfaces could attain values indicative of dense vegetation (i.e., NDVIs ≥ 0.6), when blue-colored rooftops were combined with complex surface patterns that generated more shadow. From these results, we concluded that the established relationship between LST and NDVI is likely to be invalid for non-vegetated urban industrial areas, and that NDVIs obtained for such areas should be used with caution, particularly in studies of the SUHI effect.
    VL  - 2
    IS  - 6
    ER  - 

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Author Information
  • Kumoh National Institute of Technology, Gumi, Korea

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