Abstract
Land cover change occurs at various spatial and temporal scales. For example, large-scale mechanical removal of forests for agro-industrial activities contrasts with the small-scale clearing of subsistence farmers. Such dynamics vary in spatial extent and rate of land conversion. Such changes are attributable to both natural and anthropogenic factors. For example, lightning- or human-ignited fires burn millions of acres of land surface each year. Further, land cover conversion requires contrasting with the land cover modification. In the first instance, the dynamic represents extensive categorical change between two land cover types. Land cover modification mechanisms such as selective logging and woody encroachment depict changes within a given land cover type rather than a conversion from one land cover type to another. This chapter describes the production of two standard MODIS land products used to document changes in global land cover. The Vegetative Cover Conversion (VCC) product is designed primarily to serve as a global alarm for areas where land cover change occurs rapidly (Zhan et al. 2000). The Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF) product is designed to continuously represent ground cover as a proportion of basic vegetation traits. Terra’s launch in December 1999 afforded a new opportunity to observe the entire Earth every 1.2 days at 250-m spatial resolution. The MODIS instrument’s appropriate spatial and temporal resolutions provide the opportunity to substantially improve the characterization of the land surface and changes occurring thereupon (Townshend et al. 1991).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Barnes WL, Pagano TS, Salomonson VV (1998) Prelaunch characteristics of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on EOS-AM1. IEEE Trans Geosci Remote Sens 36:1088–1100
Breiman L, Friedman JH, Olshen RA, Stone CJ (1984) Classification and regression trees. Chapman & Hall, New York.
Descloitres J, Vermote E (1999) Operational retrieval of the spectral surface reflectance and vegetation index at global scale from SeaWiFS data. International Conference on Aerosols, Radiation Budget – Land Surfaces – Ocean Colour: The Contribution of POLDER and New Generation Spaceborne Sensors to Global Change Studies, 18–22 January 1999, Meribel, France. CNES, Toulouse, France, Land Surfaces-O-02, pp 1–4.
DeFries R, Field CB, Fung I, Justice CO, Matson PA, Matthews M, Mooney HA, Potter CS, Prentice K, Sellers PJ, Townshend J, Tucker CJ, Ustin SL, Vitousek PM (1995) Mapping the land surface for global atmosphere-biosphere models: toward continuous distributions of vegetation’s functional properties. J Geophys Res 100(20): 20, 867–820,882
Defries RS, Hansen M, Townshend JRG, Janetos, A, Loveland T (1999) A new global 1km dataset of percent tree cover derived from remote sensing. Glob Ecol Biogeogr 8(5):367–379
Hansen MC, DeFries RS, Townshend JRG, Sohlberg R, Carroll M, Dimiceli C (2002a) Towards an operational MODIS continuous field of percent tree cover algorithm: examples using AVHRR and MODIS data. Remote Sens Environ 83(1/2):303–319
Hansen MC, DeFries RS, Townshend JRG, Marufu L, Sohlberg R (2002b) Development of a MODIS tree cover validation dataset for Western Province, Zambia. Remote Sens Environ 83:320–335
Hansen MC, DeFries RS, Townshend JRG, Carroll M, Dimiceli C, Sohlberg RA (2003) Global percent tree cover at a spatial resolution of 500 meters: first results of the MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields Algorithm, 7 (10), 15 p. [Available online at http://EarthInteractions.org].
Hansen MC, DeFries RS (2004) Detecting long term global forest change using continuous fields of tree cover maps from 8km AVHRR data for the years 1982–1999. Ecosystems 7:695–722
Holben BN (1986) Characteristics of maximum-value composite images for temporal AVHRR data. Int J Remote Sens 7:1435–1445
NASA/University of Maryland (2002) MODIS Hotspot/Active Fire Detections. Dataset. MODIS Rapid Response Project, NASA/GSFC [producer], University of Maryland, Fire Information for Resource Management System [distributors]. [Available online at [http://maps.geog.umd.edu]
PRODES Digital (2002) http://www.obt.inpe.br/prodes/ [last accessed June, 2003]
Roy DP, Borak JS, Devadiga S, Wolfe RE, Zheng M, Descloitres J (2002) The MODIS land product quality assessment approach. Remote Sens Environ 83:62–76
Skole D, Tucker C (1993) Tropical deforestation and habitat fragmentation in the Amazon: satellite data from 1978 to 1988. Science 260:1905–1910
Steininger MK, Tucker CJ, Townshend JRG, Killeen TR, Desch A, Bell V, Ernst P (2001) Tropical deforestation in the Bolivian Amazon. Environ Conserv 28:127–134
Townshend JRG, Justice CO, Li W, Gurney C, McManus J (1991) Global land cover classification by remote sensing: present capacities and future possibilities. Remote Sens Environ 35:243–256
USDA Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Center – Burned Area Emergency Response Imagery Support Program (2006) Available from http://www.fs.fed.us/eng/rsac/baer/ [last accessed March 15, 2006]
Van Wagtendonk JW, Root RR, Key CH (2004) Comparison of AVIRIS and Landsat ETM+ detection capabilities for burn severity. Remote Sens Environ 92:397–408
Venables WN, Ripley BD (1994) Modern applied statistics with S-Plus. Springer-Verlag, New York
Vermote E, Ray J (1999) MODIS surface reflectance user’s guide. http://modis-land.gsfc.nasa.gov/MOD09/MOD09ProductInfo/MOD09Level2G250m.htm
Zhan X, Defries RS, Townshend JRG, DiMiceli CM, Hansen MC, Huang C, Sohlberg R (2000) The 250 m global land cover change product from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer of NASA’s Earth Observing System. Int J Remote Sens 21:1433–1460
Zhan X, Sohlberg R, Townshend JRG, DiMiceli CM, Carroll ML, Eastman JC, Hansen MC, Defries RS (2002) Detection of land cover changes using MODIS 250 meter data. Remote Sens Environ 83:336–350
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Carroll, M., Townshend, J., Hansen, M., DiMiceli, C., Sohlberg, R., Wurster, K. (2010). MODIS Vegetative Cover Conversion and Vegetation Continuous Fields. In: Ramachandran, B., Justice, C., Abrams, M. (eds) Land Remote Sensing and Global Environmental Change. Remote Sensing and Digital Image Processing, vol 11. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6749-7_32
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6749-7_32
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-6748-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-6749-7
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)