Project Funding: 2011 - 2014

NRA: 2009 NASA: The Science of Terra and Aqua   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
The MODIS albedo,nadir reflectance, and reflectance anisotropy products are all being actively used for a number of environmental modeling and monitoring applications. These products make use of multi-date MODIS directional reflectance data from both the Aqua and Terra platforms to establish global land surface anisotropy at a 500m resolution. Snow albedos are retrieved if snow conditions prevailed over the majority of the retrieval period. The resultant Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions (BRDF)are used to generate the Albedos and Nadir BRDF-Adjusted Reflectances (NBAR). The Albedo products (particularly the gap-filled versions) are being used as initialization and tuning fields for several global and regional climate models (NCAR (Lawrence and Chase, 2007), ECMWF (Morcrette et al., 2008), HadGEM (Houldcroft et al., 2009) and GISS) and as an initial condition for the MODIS cloud optical properties. The reflectance anisotropy products are being used extensively to establish surface vegetation structure and roughness, as a priori multi-angle data for other instrument teams (AATSR, MERIS), and to correct imagery for view angle effects (e.g. Landsat, AVHRR). The NBAR and NBAR-VIs are the primary inputs to the MODIS land cover and phenology products and are some of the primary products of interest for Direct Broadcast applications. Increased temporal resolution is desired for these NBAR applications. Therefore this proposal will focus on improvement of the MODIS product through an increase in temporal resolution to capture rapidly changing landscapes, routine preparation of gap-filled version for modeling applications, the dissemination of increased uncertainty estimations, and further support of the Direct Broadcast version. Furthermore, as described in the original ATBD and developed under earlier NASA support (Jin et al., 2002), a separate reprocessed version using the complementary viewing geometries of both the MODIS and MISR directional reflectances can finally be established.

Publications:

Hill, M. J., Zhou, Q., Sun, Q., Schaaf, C. B., Palace, M. 2017. Relationships between vegetation indices, fractional cover retrievals and the structure and composition of Brazilian Cerrado natural vegetation. International Journal of Remote Sensing. 38(3), 874-905. DOI: 10.1080/01431161.2016.1271959

Kim, J. H., Hwang, T., Yang, Y., Schaaf, C. L., Boose, E., Munger, J. W. 2018. Warming-Induced Earlier Greenup Leads to Reduced Stream Discharge in a Temperate Mixed Forest Catchment. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. 123(6), 1960-1975. DOI: 10.1029/2018JG004438

O'Brien, P., Douglas, E. M., Schaaf, C. 2016. Examining Water Use Regimes of Suburban Watersheds at Annual and Subannual Timescales. Journal of Hydrologic Engineering. 21(1). DOI: 10.1061/(asce)he.1943-5584.0001265

Sutterlin, M., Schaaf, C. B., Stockli, R., Sun, Q., Husler, F., Neuhaus, C., Wunderle, S. 2015. Albedo and reflectance anisotropy retrieval from AVHRR operated onboard NOAA and MetOp satellites: Algorithm performance and accuracy assessment for Europe. Remote Sensing of Environment. 168, 163-176. DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2015.06.023

2015 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Poster(s)

• Utilizing Highly Portable Terrestrial Lidar to Improve Spatial and Temporal Resolution of Ecological Monitoring Efforts   --   (Ian Paynter, Edward Saenz, Francesco Peri, Crystal Schaaf, Angela Erb, Robert Chen, Jennifer Bowen, Alan Strahler, Zhan Li, Jan van Aardt, Jasmine Muir, Lola Fatoyinbo, Bruce Cook, Miguel Román, David Clark, Deborah Clark, Leo Campos, William Miranda)   [abstract]
• Evaluation of the VIIRS daily BRDF, NBAR, and Albedo product as compared to the MODIS V006 daily BRDF, NBAR, and Albedo product and in situ measurements   --   (Yan Liu, Zhuosen Wang, Qingsong Sun, Crystal Schaaf, Miguel O. Román, Angela Erb)   [abstract]

2013 NASA Terrestrial Ecology Science Team Meeting Poster(s)

• Monitoring Seasonal Albedo and Vegetation Phenology with the V006 Daily MODIS BRDF/albedo Product   --   (Zhuosen Wang, Crystal Schaaf, Alan Strahler, Xiaoyang Zhang, Yanmin Shuai, Yan Liu, Qingsong Sun)   [abstract]

2011 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Poster(s)

• Activities of the CEOS Land Product Validation (LPV) Sub­group   --   (Joanne Michelle Nightingale, Jaime Nickeson, Gabriela Schaepman-Strub)   [abstract]
• Snow-Free Gap-Filled MODIS Reflectance Anisotropy, Nadir Reflectance and Albedos for Land Modeling Applications   --   (Crystal Schaaf, Qingsong Sun, Qingling Zhang, Zhuosen Wang, Feng Zhao, Alan Strahler, Michael King, Steven Platnick, Eric Burroughs-Moody, Feng Gao)   [abstract]

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Terrestrial Ecology (TE) Project Profile