NDVI has become commonplace in biodiversity research in part due to its relationship to several environmental and biophysical processes such as potential evapotranspiration, photosynthetically active radiation, leaf area index, and net primary production. As a tractable proxy for a variety of biophysical and environmental processes, NDVI has also been used to examine the species-energy theory, which postulates that the amount of available energy within an area is indicative of the total amount and variety of resource types, which are in turn considered proximate factors driving species diversity. As a result of its utility, NDVI has seen widespread and successful use in a variety of studies attempting to understand patterns in species diversity of plants