QPhenoMetrics: An open source software application to assess vegetation phenology metrics

Phenology is one of the most reliable indicators of vegetation dynamics. Assessing and monitoring the dynamics of phenology is relevant to support several decisions in order to improve the efficiency of several farming practices. An open source application QPhenoMetrics - implemented in QGIS software that estimates vegetation phenology metrics is presented, using Earth Observation Systems (EOS) based time-series of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) as proxies for phenology. QPhenoMetrics is characterized by freely-usable and updatable code, acceptance of satellite images or text formats, time-series analysis toolbox allowing the selection of region of interest with statistical quality assessment for Vegetation Indices (VI), and estimation of ensemble metrics. The application is structured in three components: (i) input data; (ii) pre-processing of the VI time-series and several fitting methods and (iii) computation of the phenological metrics. QPhenoMetrics produces a plot with the VI time-series and corresponding phenology metrics, and a spreadsheet is created with a list of NDVI or EVI values estimated using the selected fitting method. To evaluate the application, two main Portuguese crops, vineyards and maize, and MOD13 data from MODIS sensor during 2011-2012 were considered. QPhenoMetrics was validated with vineyard phenology observations (2007-2011). A comparative analysis with software products TimeSat and Spirits was also performed. It was concluded that QPhenoMetrics can be very useful for common users to extract phenology information for 16 daily MODIS data in HDF format, text files with NDVI/EVI data and ASCII files, through a simple and intuitive graphic interface. Furthermore, the user can evaluate the quality assessment of VI of the images used. QPhenoMetrics is an effective open source tool that in addition to being free, is readily modifiable by user according to the study requirements.