Automation of Customized and Near-Real-Time Vegetation Condition Index Generation Through Cyberinfrastructure-Based Geoprocessing Workflows

Vegetation condition index (VCI) is a popular index widely used in vegetation-related analyses. Traditional VCI products are fixed on temporal extent and unchangeable for common users. Customized VCI products, which contain a lot of new information that is unavailable in traditional VCI products, are usually difficult to generate. A new method to automate the generation of customized and near-real-time (NRT) VCI products is in great demand but remains a big challenge. Recent advances in Cyberinfrastructure (CI) have shown promise to meet this challenge. This paper presents a new approach using CI-based geoprocessing workflows to automatically generate VCI products at customized and NRT conditions. The utility of customized NRT VCIs in agriculture-related analyses is also discussed. The approach has been implemented as a new function in the Global Agricultural Drought Monitoring and Forecasting System (GADMFS). The experiment results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach in facilitating the customization of VCI products and accelerating the generation of VCI products into NRT level.