Free data and Open Source Concept for Near Real Time Monitoring of Vegetation Health of Northern Kerala, India

Abstract

The paper focuses on a method of detecting and monitoring vegetation health in near-real time using freely available remote sensed satellite data and open source tools. Unhealthy vegetation condition can be interpreted as a signal to indicate the onset of drought. Recently Northern Kerala has been experiencing an increasing number of drought incidents due to weather anomalies and developmental pressures resulting in economic losses. Early detection of drought and dissemination of this information can help the State machinery to take necessary steps to mitigate drought impacts. The NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) image is generated from the AOI (Area of Interest) satellite images obtained in the NIR and Red band. Satellite images captured by Terra satellite were uploaded in the internet ftp server within 24hours. The uploaded satellite data is searched and automatically downloaded using web services by the software application developed and processed, within 10-30minutes. The process include generation of NDVI by an algorithm and the application automatically updates the recent NDVI map in the Web Server and is uploaded in the Intranet Web Server using open source software. The latest NDVI image map thus generated can be viewed through web browser in the organization intranet. Thus the Vegetation Health status of a day can be monitored the following day. Since the vegetation health do not change significantly overnight this can be considered as Near Real Time Monitoring with respect to Vegetation health. This map can be downloaded by potential users and analyzed according to the spatial area of interest.