A global standardized high-resolution Leaf Area Index validation product

This dataset provides high-resolution Leaf Area Index (LAI) reference maps for validating global LAI products. It includes a total of 258 high-resolution reference LAI rasters which are available across 105 locations in 25 countries, with spatial resolutions depending on the sensor (e.g., 30m for Landsat, 10m for SPOT). The maps contain LAI effective values and are organized by validation study, country, and location, with standardized filenames for easy processing. The dataset is available for public access on Zenodo and can be used for further analysis and validation of LAI products. Five validation studies were included and the respective articles can be found below. Validation Studies; ImagineS: Fuster, B., S´anchez-Zapero, J., Camacho, F., García-Santos, V., Verger, A., Lacaze, R., Weiss, M., Baret, F., Smets, B., 2020. Quality assessment of PROBA-V LAI, fAPAR and fCOVER collection 300 m products of Copernicus global land service. Remote Sens.12 (6), 1017. Valeri: Baret, F., Weiss, M., Allard, D., Garrigues, S., Leroy, M., Jeanjean, H., Fernandes, R., Myneni, R., Privette, J., Morisette, J., 2021. VALERI: a network of sites and a methodology for the validation of medium spatial resolution land satellite products ⟨hal-03221068⟩. Bigfoot: Gower, S.T., Kirschbaum, A.A., 2008. BigFoot Field Data for North American Sites, 1999–2003. ORNL Distributed Active Archive Center. ValLAI_Crop: Song, B., Liu, L., Du, S. et al. ValLAI_Crop, a validation dataset for coarse-resolution satellite LAI products over Chinese cropland. Sci Data 8, 243 (2021). CNERN: Fang, Hongliang; Zhang, Yinghui; Wei, Shanshan; Li, Wenjuan; Ye, Yongchang; Sun, Tao; Liu, Weiwei (2019): The field measurements and high resolution reference LAI data in Hailun and Honghe, China [dataset]. PANGAEA Dataset description; LAI Reference Dataset.zip: Contains 258 high resolution standardized LAI rasters organized into subfolders (i.e. country, validation project, year, location ) Moderate Resolution LAI Products.zip: Contains moderate resolution LAI raster products (MODIS, PROBA-V, GLASS) and MODIS NDVI raster for 9 reference sites. These products were used to validate the high resolution LAI rasters that exist in the dataset. LAI_Reference_Dataset_Locations_v2.xlsx: A list of high resolution LAI raster locations and their point coordinates with important details Readme_LAI_Dataset.txt: Summary of essential information