MOD 13- VEGETATION INDICES

In spite of the severe inroads of human constructions, much of the Earthʼs land surface remains
vegetated, and this vegetation remains critical to the life-support systems of humans and all other land-
based terrestrial animals. Since vegetation is a big part of the Earth, One of the primary interests of
the Earth Observing System (EOS) program is to study the role of terrestrial vegetation
in large-scale global processes with the goal of understanding how the Earth functions
as a system. This requires an understanding of the global distribution of vegetation
types as well as their biophysical and structural properties and spatial/temporal
variations that can be provided by the MODIS vegetation products.
The MODIS land-vegetation products provide information on terrestrial systems that have important links
to climate and atmospheric composition. These links are needed for development and application of fully coupled
models of the Earthʼs system.

Brief Description

The MODIS Vegetation-Index (VI) products will provide consistent spatial and temporal
comparisons of global vegetation conditions that will be used to monitor the Earthʼs terrestrial
photosynthetic vegetation activity in support of change detection and phenologic and biophysical
interpretations. Gridded vegetation-index maps depicting spatial and temporal variations in vegetation
activity are derived at 8-day, 16-day, and monthly intervals for precise seasonal.

Two vegetation-index (VI) products are to be produced globally for land at launch. One is the
standard normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), which is referred to as the “continuity index” to
the existing NOAA-AVHRR-derived NDVI. The other is an enhanced vegetation index (EVI) with improved
sensitivity in high biomass regions and improved vegetation monitoring through a decoupling of the
canopy background signal and a reduction in atmosphere influences. The two VIs complement each
other in global vegetation studies and improve upon the extraction of canopy biophysical parameters.

Sources of Error

Reflectance Calibration Errors:

Calibration uncertainty, Spectral Band Shift, band to Band Coregistration

Atmospheric Correction Errors:

Aerosols, Residual/ Partial Cloud Covers, Water Vapor, Ozone, Pressure

Temporal Compositing Errors:

Geolocation, Nadir Reflectance Estimation, Angular Effects on CV-MVC

Quality Assurance

The quality of the MOD13A1 product is indicated and assessed through the quality assessment
(QA) metadata objects and QA science data sets (SDS’s). The QA metadata objects summarize tile-level
(granule) quality with several single words and numeric numbers, and thus are useful for data ordering
and screening processes. The QA SDS’s, on the other hand, document product quality on a pixel-by-pixel
basis and thus are useful for data analyses and application uses of the data.

Bits Product name Value Description

00 VI produced with good quality
01 VI produced, but check other QA
0-1 VI Quality 10 Pixel produced, bust most probably cloudy
11 Pixel not produced due to other reasons than
clouds
2-4 VI Usefulness 0000
0001
0010