ESA Vegetation Parameters Climate Change Initiative (Vegetation_Parameters_cci): LAI and fAPAR, Version 1.0

Climate Research Data Package 1 from the ESA Climate Change Initiative Vegetation Parameters Project (Vegetation_parameters_cci). The dataset consists of Leaf Area Index (LAI) and fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fAPAR) gridded at 1 km resolution for the period 2000-2020. The dataset is based on data from SPOT4/5-VEGETATION1/2 and PROBA-V as input data.

LAI and fAPAR are retrieved using OptiSAIL (see Blessing and Giering, 2021 doi:10.20944/preprints202109.0147.v1). The dataset is processed for a north-south transect from Finland to South-Africa, as well as for a set of globally distributed sites that is representative for all biomes and for those sites where in-situ reference data is available.

The temporal resolution of both datasets is 5 days, but is computed using data selected from a symmetric 10-days window. The data are not smoothed in time. The transect is ordered in tiles following the PROBA-V tiling definition. These files contain the fully validated layers of (effective) LAI, fAPAR, their uncertainties and the correlation between both. The sites additionally include the variables Chlorophyll a+b leaf pigment concentration (Cab), the fraction of Chlorophyll Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fAPAR_Cab) and Surface Albedo calculated as bi-hemispheric reflectance (BHR) for diffuse illumination with a reference spectrum for spectral broadband intervals visible wavelengths (VIS, 400-700 nm), near-infrared wavelengths (NIR, 700-2500 nm), and for the combined shortwave range (SW, 400-2500 nm), as well as directional-hemispherical reflectance (DHR) for the same spectral broadbands, computed for local solar noon. These additional variables are not validated.

Further details about the data, including validation and intercomparison with similar datasets, can be found in the PDF documentation.