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Phenology is the expression of the seasonal cycle of all biotic processes. It is the pulse of our planet,
and is an essential and critical component of environmental science influencing biodiversity, species
interactions, their ecological functioning, and their effects on fluxes of water, energy, and biogeochemical
elements at various scales. Changes in phenology depict an integrated response to environmental change and
provide valuable information for global change research, land degradation studies, integrated pest and
invasive species management, drought monitoring, wildfire risk assessment, and agricultural production.
In this NASA MEaSUREs' project our multi-institution team of investigators plans to generate a seamless and
consistent sensor independent Earth System Data Record and Climate Data Record (ESDR/CDR) quality measures
of landscape phenology parameters and vegetation index, by fusing measurements from different satellite
missions and sensors. We plan to use the AVHRR, MODIS and VIIRS daily surface reflectance and design
sensor independent algorithms to be applied to these data sets. Our project is expected to generate,
document, and deliver 30+ years of consistent and well characterized ESDR/CDR quality daily measurements
of land surface VI and annual phenology parameters at a climate modeling grid (CMG, 0.05 deg) resolution.
In collaboration with, the newly established US national phenology network (US-NPN) we will correlate
remote sensing based estimate of phenology with ground observations. We aim at evaluating the consistency
and accuracy of these products by comparing them with in situ growing season phenology observation over
different biomes, latitudinal and elevational gradients.
We plan to distribute these products through the USGS center for EROS and separately via a PI web based
interactive visualization system. We plan to enlist key science and modeling community users as well as
the US-NPN in the process of evaluating the ESDR/CDR merits of these products. A user working group (UWG)
will advise this effort and link it with the wider national and international scientific community.
This work is supported by a NASA Cooperative Agreement # NNX08AT05A
