Operational monitoring of vegetative cover by remote sensing currently involves the utilization of vegetation indices (VIs), most of them being functions of the reflectance in red (R) and near-infrared (NIR) spectral bands. A generalized soil-adjusted vegetation index (GESAVI), theoretically based on a simple vegetation canopy model, is introduced. It is defined in terms of the soil line parameters (A and B) as: GESAVI=(NIR-BR-A)/(R+Z), where Z is related to the red reflectance at the cross point between the soil line and vegetation isolines. As Z is a soil adjustment coefficient, this new index can be considered as belonging to the SAVI family. In order to analyze the GESAVI sensitivity to soil brightness and soil color; both high resolution reflectance data from two laboratory experiments and data obtained by applying a radiosity model to simulate heterogeneous vegetation canopy scenes were used. VIs (including GESAVI, NDVI, PVI and SAVI family indices) were computed and their correlation with LAI for the different soil backgrounds was analyzed. Results confirmed the lower sensitivity of GESAVI to soil background in most of the cases, thus becoming a very efficient index. This good index performance results from the fact that the isolines in the NIR-R plane are neither parallel to the soil line (as required by the PVI) nor convergent at the origin (as required by the NDVI) but they converge somewhere between the origin and infinity in the region of negative values of both NIR and R. This convergence point is not necessarily situated on the bisectrix, as required by other SAVI family indices.
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