CLASICLAND

CLASIC - Land Surface

1 June 2007 - 30 June 2007

Lead Scientist: Thomas Jackson

Observatory: SGP

Several of the CLASIC science questions required flux and state measurements throughout the dominant land covers and distributed over the geographic domain. We determined the level up-scaling/aggregation required in order to understand the impact of landscape changes affecting energy balance/flux partitioning and impact on cloud/atmospheric dynamics. We determined the critical factors (canopy temperature, vapor pressure deficit, soil moisture availability, etc.) that need to be monitored in order to predict the sensible and latent heat fluxes at an acceptable accuracy for predicting the onset of cloud formation. The hyper-spectral and broadband spectral indices measured were used to establish the parameters necessary for accurate modeling of both energy and CO2 fluxes. These include LAI, green biomass, biomass residue, and maximum light use efficiency. Specific contributions include 1) tower observations of surface fluxes at several locations, 2) satellite-based flux products throughout the region, 3) intensive soil moisture for specific regions within the domain using in-situ networks and new aircraft sensors, 4) participate in the application of soil moisture retrieval algorithms and processing of PSR data sets , 5) provide regional soil moisture from satellites, and 6) cooperate in the development of geographic resources including land cover, crop residue, hyper spectral reflectance, NDVI and LAI products for each land use.