Vegetation Earth System Data Record from DSCOVR EPIC Observation:
Product Description and Analyses
Abstract
The NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) onboard NOAA’s Deep
Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) mission was launched on February 11,
2015 to the Sun-Earth Lagrangian L1 point where it began to collect
radiance data of the entire sunlit Earth every 65 to 110 min in June
2015. It provides imageries in near backscattering directions at ten
ultraviolet to near infrared narrow spectral bands. The DSCOVR EPIC
science product suite includes vegetation Earth System Data Record
(VESDR) that provides leaf area index (LAI) and diurnal courses of
normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), sunlit LAI (SLAI),
fraction of incident photosynthetically active radiation (FPAR) and
Directional Area Scattering Function (DASF). The parameters at 10 km
sinusoidal grid and 65 to 110 minute temporal frequency generated from
the upstream DSCOVR EPIC BRF product are available from the NASA Langley
Atmospheric Science Data Center. Whereas LAI is a standard product of
many satellite missions, global diurnal courses of NDVI, FPAR, SLAI and
DASF are new satellite derived products. Sunlit and shaded leaves
exhibit different radiative response to incident Photosynthetically
Active Radiation (400-700 nm), which in turn triggers various
physiological and physical processes required for the functioning of
plants. LAI, SLAI and FPAR are key state parameters in most ecosystem
productivity models and carbon/nitrogen cycle. DASF provides information
critical to accounting for structural contributions to measurements of
leaf biochemistry from remote sensing. This poster provides an overview
of the EPIC VESDR research. This includes a description of the algorithm
and its performance, details of the product, initial assessment of its
quality and obtaining new information on vegetation properties from the
VESDR product.