An Improved Method for Producing High Spatial-Resolution NDVI Time Series Datasets with Multi-Temporal MODIS NDVI Data and Landsat TM/ETM+ Images

Due to technical limitations, it is impossible to have high resolution in both spatial and temporal dimensions for current NDVI datasets. Therefore, several methods are developed to produce high resolution (spatial and temporal) NDVI time-series datasets, which face some limitations including high computation loads and unreasonable assumptions. In this study, an unmixing-based method, NDVI Linear Mixing Growth Model (NDVI-LMGM), is proposed to achieve the goal of accurately and efficiently blending MODIS NDVI time-series data and multi-temporal Landsat TM/ETM+ images. This method firstly unmixes the NDVI temporal changes in MODIS time-series to different land cover types and then uses unmixed NDVI temporal changes to predict Landsat-like NDVI dataset. The test over a forest site shows high accuracy (average difference: −0.0070; average absolute difference: 0.0228; and average absolute relative difference: 4.02%) and computation efficiency of NDVI-LMGM (31 seconds using a personal computer). Experiments over more complex landscape and long-term time-series demonstrated that NDVI-LMGM performs well in each stage of vegetation growing season and is robust in regions with contrasting spatial and spatial variations. Comparisons between NDVI-LMGM and current methods (i.e., Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model (STARFM), Enhanced STARFM (ESTARFM) and Weighted Linear Model (WLM)) show that NDVI-LMGM is more accurate and efficient than current methods. The proposed method will benefit land surface process research, which requires a dense NDVI time-series dataset with high spatial resolution.