Vejby Abstract

This pilot study investigates the use of Sentinel-1 SAR and Landsat-8 NDVI data to describe the area surrounding Waterpoort, South Africa; a small village near the Polokwane River in the Limpopo River Basin, with the objective being to evaluate the two methods for use in the area.

The study area appears, through the two data sources, as dry and with sparse vegetation. Changes in vegetation slow down with distance from the river and agricultural sites seem mostly disconnected from local precipitation and river discharge patterns. Surveying the local agriculture and sites at the river, it was found that the two data sets mismatched each other to a large degree, with NDVI data showing seasonal patterns, but with abnormally depressed values and SAR data showing almost no signs of any seasonality. The two data sets showed consistent uncorrelation for all measurement locations and both sets appear to correspond to some aspect of change in local conditions, but not the same one.