contributed by Jeffrey Gillan

SPOT Vegetation

Commercially operated by the Spot Image Corporation
Data distributed by Vito (Belgium)

The SPOT program is a series of Earth observing satellites launched by the French Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), in cooperation with Belgium and Sweden. Since 1986, five SPOT satellites have been launched and three are still currently operational. The SPOT Vegetation sensor is carried aboard SPOT 4 and 5 which were launched in 1998 and 2002, respectively. The sensor has a very large ifov (1.15 km) and is designed to monitor the Earth on regional and continental scales. It has the capability of imaging the entire Earth each day. It is particularly valuable for studying agriculture, deforestation, and other vegetation changes on a broad scale.

There are currently two Vegetation instruments on Spot satellites: Vegetation 1 (located in SPOT 4 Satellite) and Vegetation 2 (located in SPOT 5 satellite). SPOT Vegetation products are systematically acquired, archived, and available on-line. Some of the products are free and some will carry a cost.

The following products are standard products offered:

• Single image segments with top of atmosphere reflectance values
• Global composite color images with 1 and 10 day syntheses
• Global composite NDVI images with 1 and 10 day syntheses

• MODIS
• AVHRR
• ENVISAT-MERIS

_{©CNES 2009, Distribution SPOT Image S. A. France, SICORP, USA. All rights reserved.}
SPOT Vegetation image of the southwestern U.S. and Mexico

_{©CNES 2009, Distribution SPOT Image S. A. France, SICORP, USA. All rights reserved.}
10-day NDVI synthesis from SPOT Vegetation, May 2009

SPOT Vegetation collects data in 4 spectral bands. Bands 2 and 3 are used to calculate the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Band 0 (blue) is strictly used for atmospheric corrections. The sensor has the same bands as the SPOT HRVIR which enables linked studies at multiple scales. SPOT Vegetation images have 8 bit radiometric resolution (0-255).

Spot 4 and 5 Vegetation

2,250 km swath width

SPOT satellites are in a sun synchronous orbit at an altitude of 822 km. Return interval is 1 day for the Vegetation sensor.

Images from 1998 to present are available. All images from the Vegetation sensor have to be ordered from VITO located in Belgium. http://www.vgt.vito.be/. To access most Vegetation products you have to be a registered user. To become a registered user you have to email sales@vgt.vito.be

Because SPOT is commercially operated, there are some licensing restrictions regarding image usage and sharing. Please consult with SPOT to get the level of licensing that is appropriate for your research or project.

• Products older than 3 months
• 10 pre-defined ROI’s
• Download data directly from the SPOT Vegetation site at http://free.vgt.vito.be/

• All products for scientific use
• All products for Vegetation program partners
• Products older than 3 months for all other users
• Request products by submitting a form to the VEGETATION program: http://www.spot-vegetation.com/pages/request.doc

• Products younger than 3 months (except scientific use or Vegetation program partners)
• Order products through http://suvweb.vgt.vito.be

SPOT Vegetation products usually come in the Hierarchical data format (HDF). This format can be reprojected or converted into other formats such as GeoTiff, but in the past HDF has been notoriously difficult to work with. Recent versions of ArcGIS (e.g., version 9.3) and image processing software ENVI can read the HDF format. A listing of some other tools that can be used to view and convert HDF images can be found at https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/tools, but be cautioned that most of these tools are not easy to implement.

• Geerken et al. (2005) presents a classification technique of SPOT Vegetation NDVI values in a rangeland environment.
• Huang and Siegert (2006) used SPOT Vegetation imagery to classify vegetation and detect areas desertification risk in China.
• Wylie et al. (2004) used SPOT Vegetation NDVI values as a variable for determining gross primary productivity and CO₂ in a grassland steppe region of Asia.

• SPOT Vegetation Programme http://www.spot-vegetation.com/
• SPOT Vegetation User Guide http://www.spot-vegetation.com/userguide/userguide.htm
• SPOT Image website http://www.spot.com/
• CNES Vegetation web page http://smsc.cnes.fr/VEGETATION/index.htm
• SPOT Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPOT_(satellites)

• Geerken, R., B. Zaitchik, and J. P. Evans (2005), Classifying rangeland vegetation type and coverage from NDVI time series using fourier filtered cycle similarity, International Journal of Remote Sensing, Vol. 26, No. 24, pp. 5535-5554.
• Huang, S. and F. Siegert (2006), Land cover classification to detect areas at risk of desertification in North China based on SPOT Vegetation imagery, Journal of Arid Environments, Vol. 67, Iss. 2, pp. 308-327.
• Jenson, John R. (2007), Remote Sensing of the Environment: An Earth resource perspective, second edition, Prentice Hall series in geographic information science, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
• Wylie, B. K., T. G. Gilmanov, D. A. Johnson, N. Z. Saliendra, K. Akshalov, L. L. Tieszen, B. C. Reed, and E. Laca (2004), Intra-seasonal mapping of CO₂ flux in rangelands of northern Kazakhstan at one-kilometer resolution, Environmental Management, Vol. 33, supplement 1.

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