Atmospherically Resistant Vegetation Index (ARVI) for EOS-MODIS

ARVI, which is here proposed as a tool for the remote sensing of vegetation by the EOS MODIS sensor, takes advantage of the presence of the blue channel in MODIS, together with the red and near-IR channels composing the normalized-difference vegetation index (NDVI). Unlike the NDVI, ARVI resists atmospheric effects via a self-correction process for the effects of the atmosphere on the red channel. ARVI is presently shown to have a dynamic range similar to NDVI's, but is on average less sensitive to atmospheric effects by a factor of 4. A single combination of the blue and red channels in the ARVI may be used in all or most remote-sensing applications.