Monitoring the Temporal Dynamics of Four Vegetation Cover Types from the Pantanal Using the Wavelet Transform Applied to a Time-series of Evi/modis Data

Although one of the most preserved ecosystems in Brazil, the Pantanal suffers under problems such as fire, deforestation and changes in the flood and drought cycles. Monitoring all the extension of the Pantanal is essential to detect problems related to land use changes and to infer on the level of floods in the wetlands. The objective of this study was to monitor four areas in the Pantanal with different vegetation cover using the Wavelet Transform applied to a timeseries of EVI (Enhanced Vegetation Index) acquired from the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) sensor, between 2005 and 2009, in order to analyze the vegetation phenology dynamics. The results showed that the Coiflet Wavelet Transform of 4th order with 90% power, was able to remove the high frequency noise and highlight the changes of the vegetation phenology with a higher precision, allowing a better analysis of trends in the inter-annual variability of EVI. Changes of the temporal EVI pattern may indicate changes in vegetation phenology, mainly due to rainfall seasonality. The technique is robust and can be extrapolated to other regions of the Pantanal in order to detect deforestation and fire occurrences.