carlson-fractional-vegetation-cover

Fractional Vegetation Cover (FVC) Remote Sensing Method from Carlson et al 1997 Python Package

Gregory H. Halverson (they/them)
gregory.h.halverson@jpl.nasa.gov
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory 329G

Overview

This package provides a Python implementation of the Fractional Vegetation Cover (FVC) algorithm described by Carlson & Ripley (1997). It converts NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) data to FVC using a linear scaling method, suitable for remote sensing applications.

Features

• Converts NDVI to Fractional Vegetation Cover (FVC)
• Supports both NumPy arrays and rasters.Raster objects
• Based on peer-reviewed scientific literature

Installation

Install via pip:

pip install carlson-fractional-vegetation-cover

Usage

import numpy as np
from carlson_fractional_vegetation_cover import carlson_fractional_vegetation_cover

# Example NDVI array
NDVI = np.array([[0.1, 0.3, 0.5], [0.04, 0.52, 0.25]])
FVC = carlson_fractional_vegetation_cover(NDVI)
print(FVC)

Algorithm

The algorithm linearly scales NDVI values between two reference points:

• NDVIv (full vegetation): 0.52 ± 0.03
• NDVIs (bare soil): 0.04 ± 0.03

The formula:

FVC = clip((NDVI - NDVIs) / (NDVIv - NDVIs), 0.0, 1.0)

Values below NDVIs are set to 0 (bare soil), above NDVIv to 1 (full vegetation), and in between are linearly scaled.

References

• Carlson, T.N., & Ripley, D.A. (1997). On the relation between NDVI, fractional vegetation cover, and leaf area index. Remote Sensing of Environment, 62(3), 241-252. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0034-4257(97)00104-1

License

See LICENSE file for details.