Planar domain indices: a method for measuring a quality of a single component in two-component pixels

A method is presented that reduces the difficulty of measuring a particular quality of one component in a multi-component element. The planar domain index design requires two measurements: that of a signal sensitive to the desired quality of the target component and another signal sensitive to the component's weight or relative proportion to the whole. The quality signal and component weight signal form the two dimensions of a plane, and the maximum and minimum possible values for each signal define the boundaries of a domain within this plane. The position of a coordinate pair within the domain can then be correlated to the quality being measured, independent of the component's proportion to the whole. Examples given involve mixed vegetation and soil targets, with vegetation indices used to measure the component weight. Quality signals of the example applications include canopy minus air temperature as a measure of evapotranspiration, a normalized difference of near infrared and far red wavelengths as a measure of chlorophyll content, and differential synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for measuring near-surface soil moisture.