A spatio-temporal prediction of NDVI based on precipitation: an application for grazing management in the arid and semi-arid grasslands

A method for predicting the dynamic spatio-temporal variations of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) based on precipitation is proposed using combined nonlinear autoregressive with exogenous input (NARX) networks and artificial neural networks (ANNs). The proposed method is validated by applying to predict the spatio-temporal NDVI for the Hulunbuir grassland located in Inner Mongolia, China. The results show the good predictive ability for the spatio-temporal variations of NDVI with the mean absolute percentage error of 11.59%, mean absolute error of 7.11 x 10(-2) and root mean square error of 8.06 x 10(-2), respectively. The approach presented in the paper can be further used as the guidance to reduce the occurrence of overgrazing in the arid and semi-arid grasslands.