Interpretation of the modified soil-adjusted vegetation index isolines in red-NIR reflectance space

In red-NIR reflectance space, the Modified Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (MSAVI) isolines, representing similar vegetation biophysical quantities, are neither convergent to a point nor parallel to each other. Consequently, the treatment of the MSAVI isolines is distinctly different from those of other vegetation index isolines, such as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), the perpendicular vegetation index (PVI), and the soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI). In this study, the MSAVI isolines are shown to be the tangent lines of the parabola, (NIR-0.5)(2) + 2Red = 0, and the values of the MSAVI isolines are equal to the ordinates of their tangent points plus 0.5. These findings provide a graphic interpretation of the MSAVI and are useful in understanding the biophysical characteristics of the MSAVI. The MSAVI isolines are shown to better approximate field data and simulated vegetation biophysical isolines than the other 2-band vegetation index isolines. As the treatment of the MSAVI isolines can be depicted by the parabola curve, the MSAVI can be referred to as a parabola-based vegetation index.