Sri Lanka Subnational NDVI: Dekadal Vegetation Indicators and Anomalies

Giving access to dekadal (10-day) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) indicators for Sri Lanka, aggregated by sub-national administrative units using NASA MODIS collection 6.1 satellite data. Produced by the World Food Programme (WFP), the records include historical baselines and percentage anomalies to track vegetation health over time.

Use Cases

• Monitoring agricultural drought by comparing current NDVI (vim) against the long-term average (vim_lta)
• Analyzing regional vegetation health trends using the percentage anomaly (viq) column
• Validating spatial data reliability using the n_pixels count for each administrative unit

Strengths

• Uses NASA MODIS collection 6.1 high-quality satellite imagery
• Includes long-term average (vim_lta) for historical baseline comparison
• Provides pixel counts (n_pixels) to indicate the data density of each aggregate

Limitations

• Aggregated at the sub-national level, which may mask localized vegetation changes within a unit
• Dependent on cloud-free satellite observations for accurate NDVI calculation

Provenance

Source

World Food Programme (WFP) using NASA MODIS collection 6.1

Collection Method

Satellite sensor data aggregation

Freshness

Last updated March 2026.

Geography

Sri Lanka