BigFoot Field Data for North American Sites, 1999-2003

Background

Reflectance data from MODIS, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer onboard NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites Terra and Aqua ( landval.gsfc.nasa.gov/MODIS/index.php ), was used to produce several science products including land cover, leaf area index (LAI), gross primary production (GPP), and net primary production (NPP). The overall goal of the BigFoot Project was to provide validation of these products.

To do this, BigFoot combined ground measurements, additional high-resolution remote-sensing data, and ecosystem process models at six flux tower sites representing different biomes to evaluate the effects of the spatial and temporal patterns of ecosystem characteristics on MODIS products. BigFoot characterized up to a 7 x 7 km area (49 1-km MODIS pixels) surrounding the CO2 flux towers located at six of the nine BigFoot sites.

The sampling design allowed the Project to examine scales and spatial patterns of these properties, the inter-annual variability and validity of MODIS products, and provided for a field-based ecological characterization of the flux tower footprint. BigFoot was funded by NASA's Terrestrial Ecology Program.