A ratio vegetation index adjusted for soil brightness

Abstract Improved parameters for a soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI) are derived using SAIL model output for simulated wheat canopy reflectance. The SAVI is much less sensitive than the ratio vegetation index to changes in background caused by soil colour or surface soil moisture content. The parameters are developed to minimize variability due to soil brightness over the practical range of solar elevations, lear angle distributions (LAD) and leaf area indices (LAI). The parameters are added to the near-infrared (NIR) and red reflectances before calculating the NIR/red ratio. Three new versions of the SAVI are developed based on the theoretical consideration of the effects of wet and dry soils. All three are superior to the NIR/red ratio, the perpendicular vegetation index and a soil-adjusted vegetation index. Our simplest version requires the addition of a parameter to the red reflectance. The second and third versions require an iterative procedure to find the best parameters that are then added to the red or the NIR and red reflectances. In general, SAVI adjustment parameters required to remove soil-brightness effects decrease as factors that obscure the soil-surface increase. Low solar elevation and high LAI result in increasingly negative values for the parameters. The NIR/red ratio is the vegetation index least influenced by soil brightness at LAI greater than three. Our iterated versions have lowest overall errors but are occasionally subject to higher errors at the combination of low zenith angles and erectophile canopies. The SAVI based on the bare soil reflectance performs best on field data.