China Subnational NDVI: 10-Day Vegetation Indicators and Anomalies

Giving access to dekadal (10-day) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) indicators for China's sub-national administrative units, derived from NASA MODIS satellite imagery. Produced by the World Food Programme (WFP), the data includes current vegetation health metrics, long-term averages, and percentage anomalies. The records are aggregated from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) collection 6.1 from both Aqua and Terra satellites.

Use Cases

• Monitoring agricultural health by comparing current NDVI (vim) against the long-term average (vim_lta)
• Identifying drought or vegetation stress using the NDVI anomaly percentage (viq)
• Assessing the reliability of regional aggregates using the n_pixels column

Strengths

• Uses NASA MODIS collection 6.1 high-resolution satellite data
• Includes long-term averages (vim_lta) for historical baseline comparison
• Provides pixel counts (n_pixels) to indicate the statistical reliability of each aggregate

Limitations

• Aggregated at administrative levels, which masks granular spatial variation within provinces or districts
• Geographic boundaries are specific to WFP Pcode definitions which may differ from official national standards

Provenance

Source

World Food Programme (WFP) via NASA MODIS collection 6.1

Collection Method

Satellite sensor data aggregation and statistical processing

Freshness

Updated as of March 2026 per source metadata.

Geography

China