Development and validation of 2-band EVI with MODIS data in Southeast China

The enhanced vegetation index (EVI) is an optimized vegetation index developed as a standard vegetation index product for Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers (MODIS). Compare to normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), it offers improved sensitivity in high biomass regions and improved vegetation monitoring through a de-coupling of the canopy background signal and a reduction in atmospheric influences. However, computation of EVI needs three bands (red, blue and near-infrared bands), which making it difficult to generate EVI from sensors without a blue band, such as Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR).The purpose of this study is to develop and validation a 2-band EVI (EVI2), using the blue reflectance to be expressed as a function of the red reflectance. Sixteen MODIS/Terra Vegetation Indices 16-Day L3 Global 500m SIN Grid (MOD13A1.4) products with cloud cover less than 10% between 2000 and 2002 were selected for fitting of EVI2 equation parameters and evaluating the consistency between EVI2 and EVI. The results demonstrate that the differences between EVI2 and EVI are insignificant (within ± 0.04) over Southeast China.