Model-based estimation of above-ground biomass in the miombo ecoregion of Zambia

Forest Ecosystems

Table 3 Description of remotely-sensed predictor variables generated from Landsat 8 OLI, used for estimating above-ground biomass at the ground plot level

Predictor variable	Description	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	Citation
Albedo	Sum of all bands	0.4156	1.1433	0.7103	Lu et al. (2016)
Albedo.texture^a		0.0112	0.6469	0.0661	Hansen et al. (2002)
Atmospherically Resistant Vegetation Index (ARVI)	NIR – 2 x Red – Blue/NIR + 2 x Red – Blue	−0.1329	0.1974	0.0494	Kaufman and Tanre (1992)
ARVI.texture		0.0039	0.1675	0.0283
Blue band		0.0115	0.0623	0.0324
Blue.texture		0.0008	0.0556	0.0049
Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI)	2.5 x ((NIR – Red)/(NIR + (6 x Red) – (7.5 x Blue) + 1)	0.9530	1.6688	1.4284	Justice et al. ( 1998)
EVI.texture		0.0079	0.1875	0.0545
Green band		0.0297	0.0966	0.0547
Green.texture		0.0006	0.0786	0.0064
Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR)	NIR – SWIR2/NIR + SWIR2	−0.1119	0.5962	0.3084	Key and Benson (2006)
NBR.texture		0.0054	0.3623	0.0561
Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI)	NIR – SWIR1/NIR + SWIR1	−0.2136	0.3247	0.0475	Jin and Sader (2005)
NDMI.texture		0.0047	0.2289	0.0419
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)	NIR - Red/NIR + Red	0.3133	0.8169	0.5398	Rouse et al. ( 1974)
NDVI.texture		0.0091	0.3330	0.0482
NIR band	Near infrared	0.1187	0.2974	0.2263
NIR.texture		0.0034	0.0455	0.0152
Red band		0.0247	0.1368	0.0685
Red.texture		0.0016	0.1150	0.0106
SWIR1 band	Shortwave infrared 1	0.1071	0.3333	0.2073
SWIR1.texture		0.0028	0.1624	0.0205
SWIR2 band	Shortwave infrared 2	0.0497	0.2527	0.1212
SWIR2.texture		0.0021	0.1910	0.0156

Minimum, maximum, and mean values calculated from n = 64
^aAll variables denoted with .texture were calculated using the standard deviation for each band or index using a 3 × 3 pixel window