Development of an open source tool to analyze Vegetation Index from Remote Sensing data: Internship report

Frelat, R. 2011. Development of an open source tool to analyze Vegetation Index from Remote Sensing data: Internship report. France: National Institute of Applied Science of Lyon (INSA).

This report concludes my six-months internship within the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)'s Systemwide Livestock Programme. I was involved in the project \Optimizing livelihood and environmental benefits from crop residues n smallholders crop-livestock systems in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia". During my internship, I have been involved in a large scale agricultural survey focused on crop residues uses. I have also developed a tool to conduct automated analysis of Normalized Diference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from diferent optical satellite instruments AVHRR, Spot Vegetation). Land Surface Phenology metrics can be computed for every season as well as vegetation anomaly maps to study agricultural landscapes. Finally, my internship has been concluded by the development of a package and the submission of scientific article. The aim of this documents is to explain and present the package ndvits. First, I will detail the specificity of the NDVI dataset and the methods used for its analysis. Then, I will comment some examples of applications of the package.