Consequences of Land and Marine Ecosystems Interaction for the Black Sea Coastal Zone

The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was used for the analysis of ecological characteristics of the Northwest Black Sea region, which includes significant coastal territories and sea water areas between the Crimean and northwest coast of the Black Sea. The data used in this study were 1997-2008 monthly NDVI from NOAA's GVI2 dataset and visible channels from 1998 to 2008 from MODIS (Aqua and Terra) and SeaWiF scanners. It is shown, that the NDVI can be used as the characteristic of the integrated "land-sea" ecosystem, including internal links in this system. There is a direct-proportional relationship between NDVI in the land coastal zone and near-coastal water optical biological characteristics. Although the NDVI values for water are small compared to the atmospheric signals (aerosol and molecular scattering) the resulting estimations have shown, that the possible relative error of the NDVI measurement for the northwest area of the Black Sea is within 12-25%.