Vegetation - Surface Reflectance (MODIS / Aqua)

Overview and Intended Use This visualization represents a "false color" band combination (Red = 1, Green = 2, Blue = 1) of data collected by the MODIS instrument on the NASA Aqua satellite. The imagery is most useful for identifying vegetation changes, drought, and floods. At its highest resolution, this visualization represents the underlying data scaled to a resolution of 250m per pixel at the equator. The MODIS Surface Reflectance product provides an estimate of the surface reflectance as it would be measured at ground level in the absence of atmospheric scattering or absorption. This is accomplished through an atmospheric correction algorithm that is designed to drive land surface properties. The following guidelines will aid in understanding this visualization. See here for additional information on how this "false color" band combination highlights these physical characteristics of the Earth. Vegetation will appear bright green. Liquid water on the ground will appear very dark. Sediments in water will appear pink. Multi-Spectral Bands The following table lists the MODIS bands that are utilized to create this visualization. See here for a full description of all MODIS bands. Band Description Wavelength (µm) Resolution (m) 1 Visible (Red) 0.620 - 0.670 250 2 Shortwave Near IR 0.841 - 0.876 250 Temporal Coverage and Limitations of Use By default, this layer will display the imagery currently available for today’s date. The update frequency of the imagery is a "daily composite" that is assembled from hundreds of individual data files. When viewing imagery for “today,” you may notice that only a portion of the map has imagery. This is because the visualization is continually updated as the satellite collects more data. To view imagery over time, you can update the layer properties to enable time animation and configure time settings. The current version of this layer is available from present back to the start of the mission (July 3rd, 2002). Source: NASA Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), NASA Worldview, & NASA LANCE This visualization is provided through the NASA Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), which are a set of standard services to deliver global, full-resolution satellite imagery for hundreds of NASA Earth science datasets and science parameters. Through its services, and the NASA Worldview client, GIBS enables interactive exploration of NASA's Earth imagery for a broad range of users. The data and imagery are generated within 3 hours of acquisition through the NASA LANCE capability. Esri and NASA Collaborative Services This visualization is made available through an ArcGIS image service hosted on Esri servers and facilitates access to a NASA GIBS service endpoint. For each image service request, the Esri server issues multiple requests to the GIBS service, processes and assembles the responses, and returns a proper mosaic image to the user. Processing occurs on-the-fly for each and every request to ensure that any update to the GIBS imagery is immediately available to the user. As such, availability of this visualization is dependent on both the Esri and the NASA GIBS services.