Remote Sensing Products for Regional Carbon Studies

Regional studies of carbon dynamics require data products at a range of temporal and spatial scales. Remote sensing products, such as the suite of MODIS Land Products at 250-, 500-, and 1000-m resolutions and 8- and 16-day frequencies, can be used to integrate and scale site-based field studies of carbon cycling. However, in multiple applications the complexity and volume of original MODIS data products limits the utilization of these data. Typical use of remote sensing data in such projects requires rescaling, subsetting, coordinate transformations, and reprojections, which make working with satellite data time consuming. To facilitate the use and interpretation of remote sensing products, we are compiling MODIS Land Products in two forms useful to field researchers studying the carbon cycle in regional studies. The first form is centered on existing fixed field sites world-wide and subset for an area of 7 x 7 km. The second is for any area in North America up to 200 x 200 km. The MODIS subset data are derived from the stream of MODIS land products, subsetted and reformatted from their native HDF-EOS to plain format (ASCII). The ASCII files also contain information on the product quality, which is crucial for proper interpretation. We also have developed tools that allow convenient visualization of products, as grids and time series. The MODIS Land Products provided as ASCII subsets are leaf area index, plant productivity, surface temperature, reflectance, vegetation indices, albedo, and land cover products.