Long-Term Measurements Of Plant Phenology Over Europe Derived From Seawifs And Meris

The Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) and the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer Instrument (MERIS) provided accurate spectral measurements which have been used for deriving terrestrial geophysical parameters such as the Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR). This paper examines plant phenology over the European domain over the last 14 years using FAPAR derived from SeaWiFS data (1998-2002) and MERIS (2003-2011). The analysis first focuses on the definition of a method to extract key phenological variables from space-derived FAPAR. Various vegetation phenological metrics, including the start, the length and the end of growing season have been then computed over Europe. The performance of FAPAR-derived phenology metrics have been checked by comparing them against ground-based observation over ecological sites (i.e. Fluxnet and PEP725). Results suggest that plant phenology derived from earth observation agrees well with that of in-situ measurements, although quantifying the end of the growing season presented some uncertainties.

CECCHERINI Guido;  GOBRON Nadine;  MIGLIAVACCA Mirco;  ROBUSTELLI Monica; 

2014-02-20

ESA Special Publication, European Space Agency

JRC84792

978-92-9221-286-5,   

1609-042X,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC84792,