Simple Ratio (860, 550 and 708 nm)

Simple Ratio (860, 550 and 708 nm) for vegetation applications Vegetation indices quantify plant health, biomass, and photosynthetic activity by exploiting the contrast between how plants absorb visible light for photosynthesis and reflect near-infrared radiation from their cellular structure. SR3 is particularly suited for vegetation. The general formula is N2/(G * RE1), which requires G and RE1 spectral bands.

SR3 is supported by 15 satellite sensors in our database, including Dragonette-1, Dragonette-2/3, Gaofen-1, Gaofen-2, GeoEye-1 and 10 more. Each sensor uses different band designations — for example, Dragonette-1 uses the formula N2/(Band 6 * Band 16), while Dragonette-2/3 uses N2/(Band10 * Band20). Select a sensor above to see its specific band mapping.

SR3 requires G (520-600 nm), RE1 (700-710 nm). Vegetation strongly absorbs red light for photosynthesis while reflecting near-infrared light from its mesophyll cell structure, making this contrast a reliable indicator of plant vigour.

Both Python and R code samples are provided above. In Python, use rasterio to load individual band GeoTIFF files and numpy for the arithmetic. In R, the terra package handles raster operations efficiently. The key is to load bands as floating-point arrays to avoid integer division, and to handle division-by-zero cases where the denominator equals zero. For production use, consider applying a valid data mask to exclude no-data pixels before calculation.

While NDVI is the most common vegetation index, SR3 provides complementary information that NDVI cannot capture on its own. The choice of index depends on your application, sensor availability, and atmospheric conditions.