EOS Validation Program

Institution: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Phone: (301) 286-5340
E-mail: jeff.privette@gsfc.nasa.gov

Anne M. Thompson, NASA's GSFC
Stephen D. Prince, University of Maryland
Robert J. Scholes, CSIR/Forestek
Robert Swap, Univ. of VA
Niall Hanan, Univ. of CA, Santa Barbara
Peter Dowty, Univ. of VA

Marc Leroy, CNES/CESBIO
Paul Desanker, Univ. of VA
Peter Frost, Univ. of Zimbabwe

September 2001
Final Report, May 2003

We propose to measure a suite of land and atmospheric parameters over a group of sites in southern Africa. The proposal builds on existing science and monitoring networks in southern Africa, providing additional instrumentation to validate products from EOS AM and non-EOS instruments and to parameterize and validate EOS IDS models. This proposal is based on five elements:

1) A suite of in-situ instruments designed to calibrate key variables will be used to validate data products generated by sensors on the AM- 1 platform, particularly by MOPITT, MODIS, MISR and ASTER, along with several related sensors, AVHRR, Landsat 7 ETM+, POLDER and TOMS.

2) The instrument suite will be used to validate complementary land and atmospheric parameters -- surface reflectance, vegetation indices, BRDF, albedo, LAI, fAPAR, land temperature, fire and burn scar distribution, aerosol distribution, land cover and selected trace gases (03, CH4 and CO).

3) The hierarchical test site approach builds on existing southern African networks and infrastructure.

4) The project builds on a comprehensive base of existing scientific projects and international collaboration in ecosystems, land-use and atmospheric science (e.g., AERONET, IGBP Miombo Network and Kalahari Transect, SCAR-A).

5) The international proposal team will ensure that the in situ data set is scientifically integrated enough to enable in-country scientists (and their students, most particularly) to engage in EOS. We anticipate other networks for validation will be drawn into the program, and a long-term regional capacity in satellite monitoring, in-situ observation, modeling and validation will emerge.