Retrieving pace in vegetation growth using precipitation and soil moisture

The complexity of interactions between the biophysical components of the watershed increases the challenge of understanding water budget. Hence, the perspicacity of the continuum soil-vegetation-atmosphere's functionality still remains crucial for science. This study targeted the Texas Gulf watershed and evaluated the behavior of vegetation covers by coupling precipitation and soil moisture patterns. Growing season's Normalized Differential Vegetation Index NDVI for deciduous forest and grassland were used over a 23 year period as well as precipitation and soil moisture data. The role of time scales on vegetation dynamics analysis was appraised using both entropy rescaling and correlation analysis. This resulted in that soil moisture at 5 cm and 25cm are potentially more efficient to use for vegetation dynamics monitoring at finer time scale compared to precipitation. Albeit soil moisture at 5 cm and 25 cm series are highly correlated (R2>0.64), it appeared that 5 cm soil moisture series can better explain the variability of vegetation growth. A logarithmic transformation of soil moisture and precipitation data increased correlation with NDVI for the different time scales considered. Based on a monthly time scale we came out with a relationship between vegetation index and the couple soil moisture and precipitation [NDVI=a*Log(% soil moisture)+b*Log(Precipitation)+c] with R2>0.25 for each vegetation type. Further, we proposed to assess vegetation green-up using logistic regression model and transinformation entropy using the couple soil moisture and precipitation as independent variables and vegetation growth metrics (NDVI, NDVI ratio, NDVI slope) as the dependent variable. The study is still ongoing and the results will surely contribute to the knowledge in large scale vegetation monitoring. Keywords: Precipitation, soil moisture, vegetation growth, entropy Time scale, Logarithmic transformation and correlation between soil moisture and NDVI, precipitation and NDVI. The analysis is performed by combining both scenes 7 and 8 data.

Schematic illustration of the two dimension transinformation entropy approach. T(P,SM;VI) stand for the transinformation contained in the couple soil moisture (SM)/precipitation (P) and explaining vegetation growth (VI).