Geostatistical Analysis of NDVI in rotational and continuous grazing pastures

Livestock rearing is an important economical activity in Brazil, and its production is affected by pasture management methods. In this context, the use of geostatistics to analyze the spatial variability of the pastures? vegetation indices is valuable for understanding how management methods influence livestock production. Geostatistics is a tool that considers spatial dependency to interpolate data with no tendency and with minimum variance, which enables the production of precise maps using interpolated values at places that were not sampled (Vieira, 2000). The spatialization of vegetation indices such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) helps to evaluate the quality of pastures and to identify areas which may undergo a degradation process. In this study we intended to spatially evaluate two pasture management methods, rotational grazing and continuous grazing, using geostatistics and the NDVI as an indicator obtained from Landsat images of an area located in Pirassununga, São Paulo, Brazil, taken in 2011