Performance of Smoothing Methods for Reconstructing NDVI Time-Series and Estimating Vegetation Phenology from MODIS Data

Many time-series smoothing methods can be used for reducing noise and extracting plant phenological parameters from remotely-sensed data, but there is still no conclusive evidence in favor of one method over others. Here we use moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to investigate five smoothing methods: Savitzky-Golay fitting (SG), locally weighted regression scatterplot smoothing (LO), spline smoothing (SP), asymmetric Gaussian function fitting (AG), and double logistic function fitting (DL). We use ground tower measured NDVI (10 sites) and gross primary productivity (GPP, 4 sites) to evaluate the smoothed satellite-derived NDVI time-series, and elevation data to evaluate phenology parameters derived from smoothed NDVI. The results indicate that all smoothing methods can reduce noise and improve signal quality, but that no single method always performs better than others. Overall, the local filtering methods (SG and LO) can generate very accurate results if smoothing parameters are optimally calibrated. If local calibration cannot be performed, cross validation is a way to automatically determine the smoothing parameter. However, this method may in some cases generate poor fits, and when calibration is not possible the function fitting methods (AG and DL) provide the most robust description of the seasonal dynamics.