Free tools · Measured from space

Greenness in Ward 4, Big Five Hlabisa

No month seen over half the place in the last year.

The greenness score (NDVI) is how green the land looks from space, from about 0 (bare ground, rock, water) to about 0.9 (dense green growth). It follows rain, season, crops and fire. A month’s figure is the mean over the whole place where the satellite saw the ground (clouds hide some).

The last twelve months against normal

Greenness each month, November 2025 to October 2026. Bars: mean NDVI. Lines: the 1984 to 2020 normal for the month.

Show the numbers

Greenness each month, November 2025 to October 2026.: every figure
When or what	Figure
November	NDVI 0.67, normal 0.32, seen over less than half the place
December	NDVI 0.71, normal 0.37, seen over less than half the place
January	NDVI 0.75, normal 0.38, seen over less than half the place
February	NDVI 0.73, normal 0.38, seen over less than half the place
March	NDVI 0.73, normal 0.39, seen over less than half the place
April	NDVI 0.77, normal 0.41, seen over less than half the place
May	NDVI 0.76, normal 0.40, seen over less than half the place
June	NDVI 0.73, normal 0.36, seen over less than half the place
July	NDVI 0.71, normal 0.35, seen over less than half the place
August	NDVI 0.65, normal 0.32, seen over less than half the place
September	NDVI 0.61, normal 0.29, seen over less than half the place
October	NDVI 0.67, normal 0.31, seen over less than half the place

Month	Greenness	Normal	Against normal	Seen	Second reading
November 2025	0.67	0.32	+0.74 above normal	40%	0.60
December 2025	0.71	0.37	+0.67 above normal	41%	0.63
January 2026	0.75	0.38	+1.24 well above normal	41%	0.65
February 2026	0.73	0.38	+0.78 above normal	42%	0.65
March 2026	0.73	0.39	+0.52 above normal	42%	0.67
April 2026	0.77	0.41	+0.79 above normal	42%	0.69
May 2026	0.76	0.40	+1.10 well above normal	42%	0.69
June 2026	0.73	0.36	+1.36 well above normal	42%	0.65
July 2026	0.71	0.35	+1.53 well above normal	41%	0.62
August 2026	0.65	0.32	+1.10 well above normal	42%	0.60
September 2026	0.61	0.29	+1.00 well above normal	43%	0.56
October 2026	0.67	0.31	+1.16 well above normal	42%	0.61

Pale bars: seen over less than half the place, so less sure. The second reading is from a coarser European satellite product; it reads a little lower as a rule.

A normal year here (1984 to 2020)

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
NDVI	0.38	0.38	0.39	0.41	0.40	0.36	0.35	0.32	0.29	0.31	0.32	0.37

Source

Measured from space: not a crop or grazing assessment.

How we worked this out

Two readings: Digital Earth Africa (Landsat and Sentinel-2, 30 m) and, as a check, Copernicus’s 300 m NDVI. Ward by ward they move together (median correlation 0.98). From 2022 Digital Earth Africa reads about 0.01 NDVI further above CLMS than it did in 2018 to 2021, so part of a recent “above normal” may be the sensors rather than the land; CLMS, read on its own, shows the same greener years (2022, 2025 and 2026).

The normal for each month is Digital Earth Africa’s 1984 to 2020 average from Landsat. Above or below normal is measured in standard deviations of that month over those years: half a standard deviation or more is “above” or “below”, one or more “well above” or “well below”.

What we changed: we averaged Digital Earth Africa’s monthly NDVI over each 2026 ward at 240 m (its own 8 by 8 averages of the 30 m pixels) and wards up to municipalities, districts and provinces by area; CLMS’s three 10-day NDVI images a month averaged the same way.

NDVI Anomaly and NDVI Climatology, Digital Earth Africa (CC BY 4.0), modified; Landsat imagery courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey; contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2017 to 2026. Second reading: generated using European Union’s Copernicus Land Monitoring Service information (NDVI 300 m, version 3), modified.

Dataset: greenness by ward, release of 12 November 2026.