EVALUATION OF MODIS NDVI AND RAINFALL RELATION OVER THE LAND USE AND LAND COVERS OF TAMIL NADU, INDIA

Abstract. Vegetation is a part of terrestrial ecosystem that plays an important role in stabilizing global environment. Their needs to be a reliable information on the status of vegetation, which is needed for solving environmental problems. In this present study, vegetation growth and development were monitored over the land covets of Tamil Nadu, India during the crop growing season viz., Kharif season and Rabi season of 2017 using MODIS satellite derived surface reflectance product (MOD09A1) which is available at 500 m resolution and 8-days temporal period. Based on the surface reflectance data, NDVI was extracted for monitoring vegetation greening and browning. In order to correlate the relation between vegetation growth and influence of rainfall over the land covers, averaged seasonal rainfall was extracted from TRMM based rainfall product. It was noticed that NDVI response from the land covers showed a good range of temporal variations in vegetation biomass condition, however NDVI values appears to have increasing variations which indicated presence of high biomass intensity in Tamil Nadu. The seasonal NDVI response under non-vegetated/barren land class and moderate vegetation class was well related to shortage of dry spell and deficiency in precipitation that occurs due to abrupt changes in climate within the season. While the seasonal rainfall distribution over the land covers suggested that, compared to Kharif season, Rabi season received maximum amount of rainfall in Tamil Nadu during the cropping season of 2017. However, it was also observed that due fluctuation in intensity and duration of rainfall, the seasonal rainfall distribution over the land covers suggested that, compared to Kharif season, Rabi season received maximum amount of rainfall in Tamil Nadu during the cropping season of 2017.