The First ISLSCP (International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project) Field Experiment (FIFE) was a large-scale climatology project conducted on the Konza Prairie in Kansas from 1987 through 1989.

The general objectives of FIFE were to:

• improve understanding of carbon and water cycles
• coordinate data collected by satellites, aircraft, and ground instruments
• use satellites to measure carbon and water cycles

To achieve these objectives, the FIFE team focused on:

• understanding the biophysical processes controlling the fluxes of exchanges of radiation, moisture, and carbon dioxide between the land surface and the atmosphere
• developing and testing remote-sensing methodologies for observing these processes at a pixel level
• understanding how to scale the pixel-level information to regional scales commensurate with modeling of global processes

The FIFE data archive includes background and historical data from as early as 1858. Extensive analysis of the remote-sensing data and modeling of the FIFE data were performed in the years between the publication of the first (1992) and second (1996) special FIFE issues in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

The following FIFE resources are maintained by the ORNL DAAC:

• FIFE Campaign/Project Document
• FIFE Follow-On Campaign/Project Document