Long-term trends in land surface properties from Chinese Global LAnd Surface Satellite (GLASS) products

To advance global and regional land surface models at different scales and assist various decision support systems, China launched the 863 key project entitled "Generation and application of global products of essential land variables". Its duration is from July 2009 - June 2012. The key component of this project is to develop the Global LAnd Surface Satellite (GLASS) product system that generates five land products: Leaf Area Index (LAI), Albedo, Emissivity, Downwelling Shortwave Radiation and Photosynthetically Active Radiation. The first three GLASS products span from 1985-2010 with 1km and 5km spatial resolutions and 8-day temporal resolution, and the last two GLASS products span from 2008-2010 with 3-hour temporal resolution and 5km spatial resolution. After extensive validation, the long-term trends in global land surface properties are determined from these GLASS products and then are related to human activities (land cover and land use changes, air pollution) and natural variability (e.g., drought, ENSO).