Discrimination of Pastures in Beef Cattle Production Systems with Remote Sensing-Based Vegetation Index

The objective of this study was to discriminate different pastures in beef cattle production systems using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) temporal data, from April 2013 to August 2015, at experimental pasture areas located at Embrapa Pecuaria Sudeste - Canchim Farm, Sao Carlos ? SP. Vegetation photosynthetic activity and production are related with NDVI values and this index has been utilized as an indicator on livestock production systems discrimination (Blanco et al., 2008, Alvarenga, 2015). The identification of degraded pasture areas is important as the recovery contributes, in the long term, to the mitigation of greenhouse gases (Oliveira, 2015).