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. 2019 Aug 23;19(17):3662.
doi: 10.3390/s19173662.

Can We Use Satellite-Based FAPAR to Detect Drought?

Jian Peng  1   2   3 , Jan-Peter Muller  4 , Simon Blessing  5 , Ralf Giering  5 , Olaf Danne  6 , Nadine Gobron  7 , Said Kharbouche  4 , Ralf Ludwig  8 , Ben Müller  8 , Guoyong Leng  9   10 , Qinglong You  11 , Zheng Duan  12   13 , Simon Dadson  14
Affiliations

Can We Use Satellite-Based FAPAR to Detect Drought?

Jian Peng et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Drought in Australia has widespread impacts on agriculture and ecosystems. Satellite-based Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) has great potential to monitor and assess drought impacts on vegetation greenness and health. Various FAPAR products based on satellite observations have been generated and made available to the public. However, differences remain among these datasets due to different retrieval methodologies and assumptions. The Quality Assurance for Essential Climate Variables (QA4ECV) project recently developed a quality assurance framework to provide understandable and traceable quality information for Essential Climate Variables (ECVs). The QA4ECV FAPAR is one of these ECVs. The aim of this study is to investigate the capability of QA4ECV FAPAR for drought monitoring in Australia. Through spatial and temporal comparison and correlation analysis with widely used Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT)/PROBA-V FAPAR generated by Copernicus Global Land Service (CGLS), and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) drought index, as well as the European Space Agency's Climate Change Initiative (ESA CCI) soil moisture, the study shows that the QA4ECV FAPAR can support agricultural drought monitoring and assessment in Australia. The traceable and reliable uncertainties associated with the QA4ECV FAPAR provide valuable information for applications that use the QA4ECV FAPAR dataset in the future.

Keywords: Australia; CGLS; FAPAR; MODIS; QA4ECV; drought.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (ESA CCI) land cover type map for Australia divided into bare areas (BAR), savannas (SAV), grasslands (GRS), shrublands (SHR), deciduous forest (DEF), evergreen forest (EVF), and croplands (CRO). The area with light red color denotes the extent of Murray–Darling Basin.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Spatial patterns of monthly mean average Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) for the years 2001–2015: (a) Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), (b) COPERNICUS Global Land Service (CGLS), (c) Quality Assurance for Essential Climate Variables (QA4ECV).
Figure 3
Figure 3
The Pearson correlation coefficient among the FAPAR datasets for the years 2001–2015: (a) MODIS against QA4ECV, (b) MODIS against CGLS, (c) QA4ECV against CGLS.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Time series of different FAPAR products over Australia and different land cover types: (a) Australia, (b) Savannas, (c) Grasslands, (d) Shrublands, (e) Croplands, (f) Forests.
Figure 5
Figure 5
The Pearson correlation coefficient between FAPAR and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) during the years 2001–2015: (a) MODIS, (b) CGLS, (c) QA4ECV.
Figure 6
Figure 6
The Pearson correlation coefficient between FAPAR and Climate Change Initiative (CCI) soil moisture during the years 2001–2015: (a) MODIS, (b) CGLS, (c) QA4ECV.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Temporal variation of area means of SPEI, standardized anomalies of analyzed FAPAR products, and the soil moisture anomaly for the period of 2001 to 2015. It is noted that the grey areas are the uncertainties of QA4ECV FAPAR.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Temporal variation of spatially distributed FAPAR, CCI soil moisture standardized anomaly, and SPEI (rows) over Australia from March to May (columns) in 2005.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Time series of QA4ECV FAPAR, CCI soil moisture, and SPEI over Murray–Darling Basin, Australia.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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