remote sensing Article Leaf Area Index Variations in Ecoregions of Ardabil Province, Iran Lida Andalibi 1, Ardavan Ghorbani 2,* , Mehdi Moameri 2, Zeinab Hazbavi 2, Arne Nothdurft 3, Reza Jafari 4 and Farid Dadjou 1 1 Department of Natural Resources, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil 56199-11367, Iran;
[email protected] (L.A.);
[email protected] (F.D.) 2 Department of Natural Resources, Water Management Research Center, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Ardabil 56199-11367, Iran;
[email protected] (M.M.);
[email protected] (Z.H.) 3 Department of Forest and Soil Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), 331180 Vienna, Austria;
[email protected] 4 Department of Natural Resources, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan 84156-83111, Iran;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +98-91-2665-2624 Abstract: The leaf area index (LAI) is an important vegetation biophysical index that provides broad information on the dynamic behavior of an ecosystem’s productivity and related climate, topography, and edaphic impacts. The spatiotemporal changes of LAI were assessed throughout Ardabil Province—a host of relevant plant communities within the critical ecoregion of a semi- arid climate. In a comparative study, novel data from Google Earth Engine (GEE) was tested against traditional ENVI measures to provide LAI estimations. Moreover, it is of important practical significance for institutional networks to quantitatively and accurately estimate LAI, at large areas in a short time, and using appropriate baseline vegetation indices. Therefore, LAI was characterized for ecoregions of Ardabil Province using remote sensing indices extracted from Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), including the Enhanced Vegetation Index calculated in GEE (EVIG) and ENVI5.3 Citation: Andalibi, L.; Ghorbani, A.; software (EVIE), as well as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index estimated in ENVI5.3 software Moameri, M.; Hazbavi, Z.; Nothdurft, (NDVIE).