The Earth Observer January/February 1995, Vol. 7 No. 1

Investigators Working Group
Land panel Meeting Summary

Steven W. Running (swr@ntsg.umt.edu), Chair, Land Panel
The newly defined Land Panel met at the end of the IWG meeting in Hunt Valley, MD, October 21, 1994. The panel sees its charge as providing a sounding board for EOS Management when opinions are needed on EOS Land Science related issues, and as a vehicle to bring issues from the science community to EOS management. The Land Panel plans to meet during every IWG meeting, and in the interim interact using the iwg-land@ltpmail.gsfc.gov Internet address. Special meetings may be convened on specific topics requiring critical action. A particular theme of the panel is to improve coordination between sensor team members producing EOS algorithms and IDS team members using these algorithms for EOS science. The following initial issues were discussed:

  1. The advantage of keeping separate but interacting ASTER and Landsat Teams, as suggested by the chairs of both, Anne Kahle and Darrel Williams. The Land Panel endorses this suggestion.

  2. The opportunity of the land science community to request regional monitoring using the ASTER sensor. Part of the ASTER duty cycle is available for targeted requests. Anyone interested should contact Anne Kahle, JPL.

  3. The potential seriousness of loss of MIMR to land science. The following comment concerning this issue was contributed by Yann Kerr (kerr@lerts. cnes.fr):

    "The IWG land group expressed its concern about the possible loss of MIMR on the EOS PM Platform. It was said during the last IWG that ESA was no longer considering supplying a MIMR copy for inclusion on EOS PM. The land group considers this a threat to the overall mission objectives for the following reasons:

    (a) SSM/I cannot be considered as a substitute since it does not have the low frequency channels (6.8 and 10.7 GHz) which are absolutely necessary for land applications.

    (b) SSM/I also has a somewhat lower spatial and temporal resolution than MIMR.

    (c) Assuming that MIMR will fly on the European METOP platform, and that AMSR will fly on the ADEOS 2 platform, we will have two acquisitions in the morning at about the same time giving some redundancy while no acquisitions will be made in the early afternoon when measurements are most useful for flux assessment (maximum air temperature, close to surface maximum temperature) and surface temperature estimation. If only one acquisition were available, the PM option would have the highest priority.

    The Land Panel is also concerned about the implications that such a decision might have. MIMR on METOP is still not fully accepted by EUMETSAT and, by cancelling the EOS PM option, the chances of having MIMR flying on METOP are reduced. The science/user community might be left with no other choice than using AMSR on ADEOS 2 with all that it implies. The Land Panel also understands the 'operational' characteristics of METOP. It also understands that EUMETSAT wants to have direct access to MIMR data for operational applications and that the EOSDIS structure is not satisfying for these purposes. It should not be a reason to withdraw MIMR from EOS PM but rather to implement direct links between receiving stations and the European Meteorological Center. It can also be noted that a PM acquisition of MIMR data would probably have significant positive influence on the operational use of MIMR data."

  4. An interest in having the Landsat Pathfinder dataset reproduced on CD-ROM for wide, cheap availability to the land science community. The past expense of Landsat data has seriously hampered exploratory studies, particularly using multiple-date and wide-areal-coverage projects that need many scenes. This Landsat Pathfinder dataset could be the first opportunity at reasonable expense to do such studies.

  5. There is wide expectation by EOS land scientists for regular, near-real time, global surface meteorology, especially for driving terrestrial biospheric models. A variety of possible sources is currently being explored for providing this data stream. S. Running and D. Case are involved from this panel, and will report at a future meeting.

  6. The specific space and time resolution and delivery time of some sensor products is undergoing re-evaluation. In particular the MODIS Land Team (MODLAND) is interested in hearing of the time/space expectations of its products by IDS teams. This includes land cover, snow cover, surface temperature, albedo, vegetation indices, FPAR, LAI, and net primary production. IDS teams planning to use these products should make their expectations of spatial and temporal resolution known to S. Running or C. Justice. A paper summarizing MODLAND products was published in Int. J. Remote Sensing, Nov 1994, 15. 3587-3620.

  7. EOS land product validation will also be an ongoing issue for this panel. Current activities are underway organizing land product validations with the NSF LTER (Long Term Ecological Research) program, GLOBE, the U.S. National Biological Service GAP Analysis program, the WCRP GTOS (Global Terrestrial Observing System), and IGBP. All of these validation plans are in early stages of development.

  8. An EOS-wide standard gridding is being considered. The Land Panel is concerned that our needs for high spatial detail, i.e., 1 km and even smaller, will be much different than the grids needed by atmospheric science. A single EOS grid size is probably not possible, although formats that allow easy interchange should be possible.

  9. Plans are underway to provide a global topographic data source; however, C. Justice was not available to brief the panel on current plans.

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