ANALYSIS OF CHANGES IN THE STATE OF VEGETATION COVER IN THE TERRITORY OF NORTHERN KAZAKHSTAN ACCORDING TO THE DATA OF THE INTEGRAL INDEX OF VEGETATION CONDITIONS

Abstract

The current tendency to change the climatic situation is gradually becoming the main factor in the ecological destabilization of the existing ecosystems on the territory of Kazakhstan. According to the available forecasts, the expected climate change will lead to an increase in the interannual and intraseasonal variability of the weather regime, an increase in the frequency of abnormally cold winters and hot years; a shift in agroclimatic humidification zones towards northern latitudes; an increase in the number of days with high temperatures, an increase in the frequency of droughts, an increase in the rate of aridization of the territory, etc. The most vulnerable are water resources and agriculture. The vegetation cover reacts especially quickly toclimate change. In this regard, the relevance of continuous monitoring of the state of vegetation on the territory of Kazakhstan on the basis of long-term data of remote sensing of the Earth from space is increasing. Satellite imagery is extremely useful in revealing the spatio-temporal features of changes in the state of green biomass. This issue is especially interesting for the northern regions of the republic, which are major suppliers of agricultural products. As a rule, when monitoring vegetation, sets of vegetation indices are used, which are combinations of spectral reflectance values from different spectral ERS channels. This is due to the simplicity of the calculation, the large variation in the selection, and the high information content of the indices. However, despite all the advantages of remote sensing and vegetation indices, there is no systematic space monitoring of vegetation cover in Kazakhstan, there is no systematic, reliable and accessible database of vegetation indices that can be used in scientific research.