Monitoring water stress in Mediterranean semi-natural vegetation with satellite and meteorological data

•The objective is to characterize the inter-annual variation of ɛ due to water stress.•MODIS spectral indices and the Cws (from meteorological data) have been analyzed.•An operational methodology, which combines meteorological and MODIS data, is proposed.•It is based on a typical Cws that is updated for actual conditions using MODIS data.•The results confirm that the modified Cws can be used as a proxy of water stress.

In arid and semi-arid environments, the characterization of the inter-annual variations of the light use efficiency ɛ due to water stress still relies mostly on meteorological data. Thus the GPP estimation based on procedures exclusively driven by remote sensing data has not found yet a widespread use. In this work, the potential to characterize the water stress in semi-natural vegetation of three spectral indices (NDWI, SIWSI and NDI7) - from MODIS broad spectral bands - has been analyzed in comparison to a meteorological factor (Cws). The study comprises 70 sites (belonging to 7 different ecosystems) uniformly distributed over Tuscany, and three eddy covariance tower sites. An operational methodology, which combines meteorological and MODIS data, to characterize the inter-annual variations of ɛ due to summer water stress is proposed. Its main advantage is that it relies on existing series of meteorological data characterizing each site and allows calculating a typical Cws profile that can be “updated” (Cws*) for the actual conditions using MODIS spectral indices. The results confirm that the modified Cws* can be used as a proxy of water stress that does not require concurrent information on meteorological data.