We have studied the accuracy of ice thickness (hi) retrieval based on night-time MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) ice surface temperature (Ts) images and HIRLAM (High Resolution Limited Area Model) weather forcing data from the Arctic. The study area is the Kara Sea and eastern part of the Barents Sea, and the study period spans November–April 2008–11 with 199 hi charts. Fo...

Research has shown that remote sensing in both the optical and microwave domain has the capability of estimating vegetation water content (VWC). Though lower in spatial resolution than MODIS optical bands, AMSR-E microwave measurements are typically less affected by clouds, water vapor, aerosol or solar illumination, making them complementary to MODIS real time measurements over regions of clou...

Long term, high quality estimates of burned area are needed for improving both prognostic and diagnostic fire emissions models and for assessing feedbacks between fire and the climate system. We developed global, monthly burned area estimates aggregated to 0.5 spatial resolution for the time period July 1996 through mid-2009 using four satellite data sets. From 2001–2009, our primary data sourc...

The shortwave broadband MODIS albedo has higher uncertainties over snow-covered land and at large Solar Zenith Angle (SZA). We have documented a systematic negative bias for SZA>55-60° in Greenland. This study uses in situ data from the Greenland Climate Network (GC-Net) to characterize and empirically correct the MODIS snow albedo (MCD43C) bias at large SZA and thereby remediate the implied bi...

Forest canopies are composed of photosynthetically active vegetation (PAV, chloroplasts) and nonphotosynthetic vegetation (NPV, e.g., cell wall, vein, branch). The fraction of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) absorbed by the canopy (FAPAR) should be partitioned into FAPARPAV and FAPARNPV. Gross primary production (GPP) of forests is affected by FAPARPAV. In this study we developed and ...

This study examines the suitability of 250 m MODIS (MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) data for mapping global cropland extent. A set of 39 multi-year MODIS metrics incorporating four MODIS land bands, NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) and thermal data was employed to depict cropland phenology over the study period. Sub-pixel training datasets were used to generate a set...

The increasingly intensive and extensive coal mining activities on the Loess Plateau pose a threat to the fragile local ecosystems. Quantifying the effects of coal mining activities on environmental conditions is of great interest for restoring and managing the local ecosystems and resources. This paper generates dense NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) time series between 2000 and 2...

This study presented a MODIS 8-day 1 km evapotranspiration (ET) downscaling method based on Landsat 8 data (30 m) and machine learning approaches. Eleven indicators including albedo, land surface temperature (LST), and vegetation indices (VIs) derived from Landsat 8 data were first upscaled to 1 km resolution. Machine learning algorithms including Support Vector Regression (SVR), Cubist, and Ra...

1) Using MODIS Terra Level 1B data containing calibrated and geolocated radiances, we investigated a regional signal of wind-blown mineral dust over the oceans. The goal of this study was to identify the thermal-IR radiative signature of atmospheric dust originating from the main world’s dust production regions and explore the implications to the dust detection over oceans with the techniques b...

The ability to effectively use remotely sensed data for environmental analysis is dependent on understanding the underlying procedures and associated variances attributed to the data processing and image analysis technique. Equally important is understanding the error associated with the reference data used to assess the accuracy of image products. This paper details measurement variance accumu...