EDG Data Set Name
MODIS/Terra Land Cover Type 96-Day L3 Global 1km ISIN Grid
Granule Shortname
MOD12Q1
Data Set Characteristics
Area = 10° x 10° lat/long
Size = 1200 x 1200 rows/columns
File Size = ~23 MB
Resolution = 1 kilometer
Projection = Integerized Sinusoidal
Emissivity Data Type = 8-bit Unsigned Integer
Data Format = HDF-EOS
Science Data Sets (SDS) = 16
Product Description
The Land Cover Classification product, MOD12Q1, identifies 17 classes of land cover in the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) global vegetation classification scheme. This scheme includes 11 natural vegetation classes, 3 developed land classes, one of which is a mosaic with natural vegetation, permanent snow or ice, barren or sparsely vegetated, and water. Additional Science Data Set layers for other classification schemes include the University of Maryland modification of the IGBP scheme, the MODIS LAI/fPAR (MOD15) scheme, and the MODIS Net Primary Production (MOD17) scheme. These classes are distinguished with a supervised decision tree classification method.
The MOD12 classification schemes are multitemporal classes describing land cover properties as observed during the year (12 months of input data). Successive production of this "annual" product allows us to make new land cover maps with increasing accuracies as both classification techniques and the training site database mature. For land cover change, users should use the Vegetation Cover Conversion product, MOD44, or the Land Cover Dynamics product, MOD12Q2. The latter is expected to appear in the end of 2002, as two years of reprocessed consistent MODIS data becomes available.
The data are available for the global extent of land area in 317 HDF-EOS file format files in nominal 10° tiles in Integerized Sinusoidal Grid projection.
LP DAAC User Services
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (EROS)
47914 252nd Street
Sioux Falls, SD 57198-0001