International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project (ISLSCP)An important component in understanding and predicting climate change is understanding how carbon, energy and water are exchanged between the atmosphere and the terrestrial biosphere. Climate models require worldwide information about terrestrial changes that are responsible for interactions between the atmosphere and land-surfaces. It is the goal of all activities within ISLSCP to assess these changes in terms of the physical and biological quantities, which can be related to the exchange of energy and water between the surface and atmosphere. ISLSCP was established in 1983 under the United Nation's Environmental Programme to promote the use of satellite data for the global land-surface data sets needed for climate studies. Since then, ISLSCP has played a key role in addressing land-surface processes, developing climate models, experiment design and implementation, and data set development. Because of the unique and important contributions ISLSCP has made and continues to make towards improving the representation of land surface processes in climate models, which is critical to the success of the GEWEX program, ISLSCP was accepted as a component of the GEWEX program in December 1992. ISLSCP Objectives
A series of analyses and field experiments have been conducted to collect and validate satellite data for land-surface models. The First ISLSCP Field Experiment (FIFE) was conducted over the period of 1987-1989 on the Konza Prairie in Kansas. The purpose of FIFE was to provide satellite derived data on land-surface states such as biomass, cover type and temperature; and land-surface processes such as transpiration and photosynthesis. FIFE results are reported in a special Journal of Geophysical Research issue, November 30, 1992. Six CD-ROMs with FIFE data have been released. The work of FIFE was continued and extended in the Boreal Ecosystems-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS) in Canada. BOREAS, a field campaign that began in 1994, studied the short time scale internal dynamics of the boreal forest biome and their links to the global energy, water and carbon cycles. Initiative IISLSCP Initiative I, a pilot project, produced the first global land cover, hydrometeorology, radiation and soils data sets regridded to a common 1 x 1-degree format for 1987-1988. The Initiative I collection was published in 1995. Scientists, educators and others have ordered over 13,000 ISLSCP I CD-ROMs from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) to support a range of uses: weather forecast improvements, hydrological applications, macroscale basin modeling, biogeochemical and carbon tracer models, global carbon flux model comparisons, general circulation models, model validation and comparison, algorithm development and education. The ISLSCP I data collection is also accessible electronically via the NASA GSFC DAAC. Since the ISLSCP I release, over 267,000 files have been acquired via anonymous FTP and its use is increasing. Over 500 Initiative I citations have been made in the scientific literature. Initiative IIThe Initiative II collection, consists of a 10-year core global data collection spanning the years 1987 to 1995 with improved spatial and temporal resolution (one-quarter to 1 degree) using improved data generation algorithms. In addition, Initiative II includes some data sets spanning the 18-year period, 1982-1999. The data collection includes carbon data sets uniquely designed to support global carbon cycling studies. Initiative II data sets provide a comprehensive collection of high priority global data sets in a consistent data format and Earth projection. A number of WCRP and International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP) initiatives are leveraged on ISLSCP II, including the GEWEX Global Soil Wetness Project-2 (GSWP-2), the Global Carbon Observing System (GCOS), NASA's Interdisciplinary Science Projects (IDS), NASA's Seasonal to Interannual Prediction Project (NSIPP), the GEWEX Global Land Atmosphere System Study (GLASS) and others. The Initiative II CD/DVD-ROM final product will be available in the Spring of 2003. Many of the data sets are now available electronically at the Initiative II web site. Points of ContactDr. Pavel Kabat (Science Chair) Dr. Forrest Hall (Initiative II Principal Investigator) |