arcgis 10.1 - Creating a Time series NDVI map

I would like to create a NDVI Time Series map? How do I do that? The one I probably would like to have similar like this http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc02/pap0593/p05931.jpg

I created many NDVI for each or several months from the year of 2002 to 2013?

1) Do I need to add monthly NDVI to create an output monthly NDVI file and then the next step is to take new output monthly NDVI to produce a new output one year file?

(or)

2) Add all the NVDI from one year to generate a new output for one year file ?

The NDVI were produced from an ASTER.

Answer

As you are trying to compare these images, the key is to do everything to make the images to be as comparable as they can be, so the actual changes can be seen.

Here are my steps:

1. 
   

   Acquire Satellite images that are taken during the same time of the growing season, preferably peak biomass (see Christophers answer). Note, this might be some other time too, for example if you want to compare the onset of growing season you would acquire spring time images. This depends about the problem you are trying to answer with these maps.

   
   


2. 
   

   Atmospheric conditions probably differ between images, so it is preferred to perform athmospheric correction. Please, see this paper by Song et al. 2001: Classification and Change Detection Using Landsat TM Data: When and How to Correct Atmospheric Effects?

   
   


3. 
   

   Calculate NDVIs from atmo-corrected satellite images.

   
   



4. 
   

   Classify NDVI values into same ranges. Breaks can be for example 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and so on. Make sure that breaks are the same in every image (as they are in your example .jpg). Classification and breaks really depends from your data. You propably need a little bit of trial and error to get it just right.

   
   


5. 
   

   Set data frame layouts in ArcMap layout window and add north arrow and scale bar. Make a legend (one is enough when same classification is used).