Data: Remote Sensing Data Products Now Available for Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Science

Ramakrishna R. Nemani, NASA ARC, rama.nemani@nasa.gov (Presenter)
James Acker, Goddard Earth Sciences DISC, jim.acker@nasa.gov

In this presentation we will discuss data sets, new as well as those updated/extended, that have become available over the past two years to land and oceans communities. For the land community, there is now a consistently processed 30yr NDVI data set from AVHRR covering the period from1981 to 2010. Observations of fluorescence from GOSAT have been found to provide an independent assessment of the spatio-temporal patterns in gross primary production estimated by models as well as those extrapolated from global flux tower networks. Studies interested in tracking carbon pools can now take advantage of data on vegetation heights or biomass derived from lidar (GLAS), radar (ASAR, PALSAR) and optical sensors. High-resolution commercial satellite imagery from NGA through WARP, forest disturbance data from LEDAPS, and stand age maps from the US Forest Service, and surface temperature and emissivity data from JPL are now available. New products from QuikScat and AMSR-E appear to hold great promise for studying ecosystem dynamics in perennially cloud-covered tropical regions. Changes in data policies at the US Geological Survey made the entire Landsat archive available free to the community. Projects such as the Web-Enabled Landsat Data (WELD) and the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) now offer the community an opportunity to create MODIS-style products globally from Landsat at 30m resolution, enhancing our ability to study changes in ecosystems both in time (since 1972) and space.

For the ocean research community, several improved data products and new data products are now available for research use. The use of semi-analytic algorithms based on inherent optical properties (IOPs) enables absorption and backscatter coefficient data products, providing improved diagnostic capabilities for the upper ocean bio-optical environment. Several research groups are developing algorithms that are specific for phytoplankton functional groups, going beyond the simple detection of phytoplankton chlorophyll and thus allowing better examination of trophic level interactions. Improved data products also can enable more accurate assessment of primary production (PP) in the complex optical environment of the coastal zone, where PP is significantly higher than open ocean waters. Addition of advanced data products to NASA’s innovative online data analysis systems, at higher spatial and temporal resolution than previously available, will potentially enable increased utilization of ocean remote sensing data in regions critically impacted by coastal development, natural disasters, and climate change-related processes.

Presentation: 2011_Oct03_PM_Nemani_360.ppt (29260k)

Presentation Type:  Plenary Talk

Session:  Plenary - Data

Presentation Time:  Mon 2:30 PM  (15 minutes)