A dataset of normalized difference vegetation index in the Three-river Headwaters during 2000-2018

Abstract

Vegetation is an important component of the terrestrial ecosystem. The changes of vegetation are assumed to well indicate the dynamic changes of the ecosystem. However, the changing global climate and the intensifying human activities have a great effect on vegetation growth, which particularly highlights the implications to monitor and assess vegetation changes. Vegetation changes are usually measured by vegetation indexes. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) based on remote sensing is widely used in the studies on vegetation changes and climate impact. In this study, we used the spectral reflectance data product (MOD09Q1) of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) from 2000 to 2018 to calculate the NDVI (with a spatial resolution of 250m and temporal step of 8 days). The S-G filtering method of the TIMESAT3.2 software is applied to remove the noise in the NDVI time series for the reconstruction of time series. In this way, we finally obtained this dataset, which is open to the public for sharing and downloading. It is expected to support further studies on the dynamic changes of vegetation in the Three-river Headwaters.