NDVI is particularly suitable for vegetation greenness mapping (Ceccato et al., 2002b) and some researchers have found suitable for soil moisture investigations. In addition to vegetation indices, GAO (1996) developed Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) which is related to vegetation water content. The index uses the ratio of reflectance in NIR
and SWIR correspond to bands 2 and 7. Inclusion of additional SWIR band in MODIS compared to other sensors such as AVHRR helps researchers to assess the vegetation and soil moisture conditions at regional and global scales.