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M. Zribi, T. Anguela, B. Duchemin, Z. Lili, W. Wagner, S. Hasenauer, A. Chehbouni:
"Relationship between soil moisture and vegetation in the Kairouan plain region of Tunisia using low spatial resolution satellite data";
Water Resources Research, 46 (2010), 1 - 12.

The present paper proposes an empirical approach for the modeling of vegetation
development, using moisture measurements only. The study is based simply on the use of
two databases: one containing soil moisture products derived from ERS scatterometer data
over the period 1991-2006 and the other containing normalized difference vegetation
indices (NDVI) derived from advanced very high resolution radiometer over the period
1991-2000. The study is applied over the Kairouan plain, the central semiarid region of
Tunisia (North Africa). Soil moisture products were first validated on the basis of
comparisons with Global Soil Wetness Project, Phase 2 Data, outputs and rainfall events.
The soil moisture distribution during the rainy period between October and May is
described and is found to be correlated with the vegetation dynamics estimated using the
NDVI products. Finally, a semiempirical model is proposed, based on satellite moisture
and NDVI products, which allows the NDVI value to be estimated for a period of 1 month
during the rainy season as a function of the moisture profile estimations obtained during
the previous months. This approach could prove very useful and provide a simple tool
for the modeling of vegetation dynamics during rainy seasons in semiarid regions.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2009WR008196