Zambia Subnational NDVI: Dekadal Vegetation Indicators and Anomalies

Dekadal vegetation health indicators for Zambia, derived from NASA's MODIS collection 6.1 satellite imagery. Produced by the World Food Programme, the data aggregates Aqua and Terra satellite observations into sub-national administrative units to track environmental changes. It includes 10-day NDVI values, long-term averages, and percentage anomalies for each administrative region.

Use Cases

• Detecting drought or crop failure by monitoring the NDVI anomaly percentage (viq) across different dekads
• Analyzing seasonal vegetation trends by comparing current 10-day NDVI (vim) against the long-term average (vim_lta)
• Correlating regional food security levels with vegetation health using Pcode-linked administrative aggregates

Strengths

• Derived from NASA MODIS collection 6.1 high-resolution satellite data
• Includes vim_lta for direct comparison against historical vegetation baselines
• Uses standardized WFP Pcode references for easy joining with other humanitarian datasets

Limitations

• Aggregated at the sub-national level, which obscures localized vegetation variance within a district
• Data quality in the n_pixels column may be affected by cloud cover during specific 10-day windows

Provenance

Source

World Food Programme (WFP) via NASA MODIS collection 6.1

Collection Method

Satellite sensor data aggregation from Aqua and Terra platforms

Freshness

Last updated March 2026; follows a dekadal (10-day) update frequency.

Geography

Zambia