Potential of Long Time Series of FAPAR Products for Assessing and Monitoring Land Surfaces Changes: Examples in Europe and the Sahel

Earth observation systems have been shown to be high-quality tools to review the state of terrestrial surfaces at the global scale over last decades. In the special context of monitoring land degradation and desertification, long time series of remote sensing products are needed to evaluate the changes in terrestrial surfaces. For example, the vegetation photosynthesis activities on terrestrial environments can be documented from spectral measurements made in space. Advances in the understanding of radiation transfer and the availability of high performance instruments have led to the development of a new generation of geophysical products providing reliable, accurate information on the state and evolution of terrestrial environments. Specifically, a series of optimized algorithms have been developed to estimate the Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) for a suite of recent instruments. Such an approach allows the synergistic use of FAPAR products derived from different sensors and the construction of FAPAR time series independent from the life time of these specific sensors. This paper summarizes the methodology and performance of the FAPAR algorithm and presents various examples of applications showing an analysis of seasonal cycle and maps of vegetation activity anomalies.

GOBRON Nadine;  VERSTRAETE Michel;  PINTY Bernard;  TABERNER Malcolm;  AUSSEDAT Ophelie; 

2010-01-28

Taylor and Francis Group

JRC56580

978-0-415-39769-8,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC56580,