BigFoot Land Cover Surfaces for North and South American Sites, 2000-2003

For an in depth discussion of methods used to produce these surfaces, please see references.Additional information on land cover surface development can be found on the BigFoot website at fsl.orst.edu/larse/bigfoot/ovr_mthd.html.BigFoot

Background

Reflectance data from MODIS, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer onboard NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) satellite Terra (landval.gsfc.nasa.gov/MODIS/index.php), is used to produce several science products including land cover, leaf area index (LAI) and net primary production (NPP). The overall goal of the BigFoot Project was to provide validation of these products. To do this, BigFoot combined ground measurements, additional high resolution remote sensing data, and ecosystem process models at nine flux tower sites representing different biomes to evaluate the effects of the spatial and temporal patterns of ecosystem characteristics on MODIS products.

BigFoot characterized up to a 7 x 7 km area (49 MODIS pixels) surrounding the CO2 flux towers located at each of the nine sites. We collected multi-year, in situ measurements of ecosystem structure and functional characteristics related to the terrestrial carbon cycle. Our sampling design allowed us to examine scales and spatial pattern of these properties, the inter-annual variability and validity of MODIS products, and provided for a field-based ecological characterization of the flux tower footprint.

BigFoot was funded by NASA's Terrestrial Ecology Program.