Leaf area index (LAI) and fraction of vegetation-absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (fpar) characterize vegetation functioning. They remain one of the most popular of all the modis land…

This federal contract was awarded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Shared Services Center to the Trustees of Boston University, a private university in Boston, Massachusetts. The contract is for the continued maintenance and assessment of Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Fraction of Vegetation-Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FPAR) products generated from Terra and Aqua MODIS instrument data. These products characterize vegetation functioning and have broad applications for scientific, public, and private organizations involved in climate, carbon cycle, ecology, hydrology, and agriculture modeling, monitoring, and research. The $339,602.83 contract is a grant for research that will run from April 2018 through May 2023. There is no set-aside designation indicated for this award.

Leaf area index (LAI) and fraction of vegetation-absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (fpar) characterize vegetation functioning. They remain one of the most popular of all the modis land products according to the LP daac and web of science statistics the user community includes scientific (modelers of climate, carbon cycle, ecology, hydrology, crop production; etc.), public (meteorological organizations, deforestation, drought and desertification monitoring organizations, rapid response systems, pest risk evaluation companies, ngos and governments; etc.) and private (international agriculture, forestry & insurance companies, traders; etc.) organizations. LAI and fpar have been generated from both terra and aqua modis instrument data, starting from their respective launches, with a custom physics-based algorithm that has been refined for each successive collection. The current version products are of research-quality and have been validated (stage-2 for LAI and stage-1 for fpar). All activities related to algorithm development, refinement, implementation, product assessment, validation, quality control and scientific applications have been published in over 50 peer-refereed journal publications over the past 2 decades. The objective of this statement-of-work is continued maintenance and assessment of LAI and fpar products generated from the terra and aqua modis instrument data during the FY2018- 2020 period. This is met through these activities: (1) quality assessment of the products, (2) evaluation of impact of any changes in instrument performance (or, upstream algorithm changes) on the products, (3) assisting in user inquiries, (4) interfacing with EDC LP daac, (5) participation in any planned RE-processing activities, (5) participating and leading in scientific activities related to product evaluation, inter-comparison and application studies, (6) community building, support and outreach, (7) updating documentation and (8) participation in modis science team activities. The end goal is to assure continued research quality of these products.