Project Funding: 2006 - 2008

NRA: 2005 NASA: Advancing Collaborative Connections for Earth-Sun System Science   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
The problem The North American Carbon Program (NACP) is currently a major component of NASA’s carbon cycle and ecosystem research focus. However, serving on, and interacting with, the NACP science steering group, as well as the ad-hoc group on Remote Sensing for NACP and the task force to coordinate NACP’s mid-continent intensive campaign has made it clear that NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) data products are not being used to their full potential within NACP. The solution NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is operationally producing global product from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). This is done within the MODIS Adaptive Processing System (MODAPS). The related software operates on a cluster of multimission processing systems supporting several research teams. Two recent extensions of MODAPS, which were developed for archive and distribution of MODIS products, are the Atmospheres Archive and Distribution System (AADS) and the Land Archive and Distribution System (LADS). AADS and LADS offer new opportunities for custom processing and distribution of MODIS products. The goal of this proposal is to leverage, extend, and tailor the functionality available through AADS and LADS to serve the remote sensing needs of the North American Carbon Program as a: “Data and Information Systems Support for Science Focus Areas and Applications”. The purpose of these enhancements is to streamline access to MODIS atmosphere and land data products, to reduce data volume by providing only those data required by the user, and to improve the utility of data products. The proposed work will provide NACP investigators with a time series of MODIS products and custom preprocessing that will allow for direct ingest into an investigators modeling framework. By reducing the burden associated with ordering and pre-processing of MODIS products, we will enable NACP investigator to focus on the information content in MODIS data and its contribution to understanding carbon budgets. Anticipated Benefits This proposal will serve key researchers within the NACP who have an urgent need for enhanced support of MODIS data. The needs of this group will be representative of the larger climate modeling community and other land and atmosphere researchers; and the tools developed

Publications:

Gao, F., Morisette, J. T., Wolfe, R. E., Ederer, G., Pedelty, J., Masuoka, E., Myneni, R., Tan, B., Nightingale, J. 2008. An Algorithm to Produce Temporally and Spatially Continuous MODIS-LAI Time Series. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters. 5(1), 60-64. DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2007.907971

Nightingale, J. M., Morisette, J. T., Wolfe, R. E., Tan, B., Gao, F., Ederer, G., Collatz, G. J., Turner, D. P. 2009. Temporally smoothed and gap-filled MODIS land products for carbon modelling: application of the fPAR product. International Journal of Remote Sensing. 30(4), 1083-1090. DOI: 10.1080/01431160802398064

2008 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Posters

• Temporally smoothed and gap-filled MODIS Land Products for Carbon Modeling: Application of the FPAR Product   --   (Joanne Michelle Nightingale, Jeffrey Morisette, Robert Wolfe, Bin Tan, Feng Gao, Greg Ederer, Jim Collatz, Dave Turner)   [abstract]
• MODIS for NACP: data access and distribution   --   (Greg Ederer, Jeffrey T Morisettte, Robert Wolfe, Feng Gao, Bin Tan, Joanne Nightingale)   [abstract]   [poster]

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

• North American Carbon Program (NACP) Project Profile