Land Archives - National Centre for Earth Observation

Aggregated Canopy Model (ACM)

ACMv1 (Williams et al., 1997) and ACMv2 (Smallman & Williams 2019) are daily to monthly time step emulators of gross ecosystem fluxes. Both ACMs simulate canopy scale photosynthetic activity (gross primary productivity, GPP) while ACMv2 also includes a simple, but realistic ecohydrological model of the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum estimating transpiration, evaporation from the soil surface and of intercepted rainfall from the canopy surface, soil runoff and drainage. The ACM models can be used independently or integrated within the DALEC suite of intermediate complexity terrestrial ecosystem models.. They are written in Fortran with control code written in R.

Contact: Luke Smallman (NCEO/Edinburgh)

Theme 5 – Cryosphere and Polar Oceans – Ice Sheet Dynamics: Jakobshavn Glacier Calving front – SAR backscatter images

This dataset has been produced as part of the Theme 5 (Cryosphere and Polar Oceans) in the National Centre for Earth Observation which aims to use new EO data to quantify changes in the mass balance of the cryosphere and to develop new models to represent the relevant processes in coupled climate prediction models. This dataset holds timeseries of Greenland glacier calving front fluctuations as maps and backscatter intensity images for the period March-July 2011. The dataset consists of 38 SAR backscatter images acquired every 3 days between the 12th March and 1st July 2011 during the ERS-2 3-day campaign.

Theme 5 – Cryosphere and Polar Oceans – Ice Sheet Dynamics: Jakobshavn Glacier Velocity Maps

This dataset has been produced as part of the Theme 5 (Cryosphere and Polar Oceans) in the National Centre for Earth Observation which aims to use new EO data to quantify changes in the mass balance of the cryosphere and to develop new models to represent the relevant processes in coupled climate prediction models. This dataset holds timeseries of Greenland glacier velocity fluctuations as maps for the period March-July 2011. The 37 velocity maps were derived from SAR data acquired during the 2011 ERS-2 3-day campaign. The velocity maps are 3-day velocity averages and are given in meters per year (m/y) (magnitude values).

Global Vegetation Height Frequency Distributions (v1.1) from the ICESAT GLAS instrument produced under NCEO

This dataset provides global (between 60 S and 80 N) vegetation height (or object height) frequency distributions per half by half degree longitude and latitude derived from ICESAT Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) waveform data. This version 1.1 data was produced as part of the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO).

Posterior South American monthly mean surface flux of methane (2010-2018) produced using the INVICAT 4D-Var inverse model.

This data set consist of a single file which contains a set of optimised global surface fluxes of methane (CH4), produced through variational inverse methods using the TOMCAT chemical transport model, and the INVICAT inverse transport model. These surface fluxes are produced as monthly mean values on the (approximately) 5.6-degree horizontal model grid. The associated uncertainty for the flux from each grid cell is also included. The fluxes and uncertainties are global and cover the period Jan 2010 – Dec 2018.

GloboLakes: high-resolution global limnology dataset V1.0

These data are high-resolution datasets related to in-land water for limnology (study of in-land waters) and remote sensing applications. This includes: distance-to-land, distance-to-water, water-body identifier and lake-centre co-ordinates on a high-resolution grid, produced by the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading. Data was derived using the ESA CCI Land Cover Map. The lake identifiers (IDs) are from the Global Lakes and Wetlands Database (GLWD), and lake centres are defined for in-land waters for which GLWD IDs were determined. The new datasets therefore link recent lake/reservoir/wetlands extent to the GLWD, together with a set of coordinates which locates unambiguously the water bodies in the database.

NCEO Kenya forest aboveground biomass map 2015 v21.0

The NCEO Kenya forest aboveground biomass map shows aboveground woody biomass (AGB) in Kenyan forests. Forest areas include vegetated wetlands and wooded grassland for the year 2015. The map was generated by combining field inventory plots (KFS) with Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS-2), Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR-2) and multispectral optical data (NASA Landsat 8), by means of a Random Forests algorithm within a k-Fold calibration/validation framework. These data were produced by the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO), University of Leicester, in collaboration with the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) with funding from the NCEO ODA Programme.

NCEO ARD STAC API

This tool is the backend for the NCEO ARD STAC catalogue, which automatically ingests the new satellite images processed on the JASMIN platform and deals with user queries with different filtering criteria. This provides a single URL API for the entire NCEO ARD dataset.

Contact: Feng Yin (NCEO/UCL)

NCEO ARD browser

This tool is the web map interface to the NCEO Analysis Ready Data (ARD) generated with the SIAC method for Sentinel-2 data. It allows users to easily find and display the Sentinel-2 images over a map and do simple spectral indices over different satellite images.

Contact: Feng Yin (NCEO/UCL)

ARC (Crop biophysical parameters retrieval from Sentinel 2)

The ARC module, implemented in Python, facilitates the retrieval of crop biophysical parameters from time-series data of Sentinel-2 multispectral reflectance. This module encompasses an archetype model that describes the evolution of crop biophysical parameters over time. By feeding the archetype time series of these parameters to the PROSAIL model, it simulates the hyperspectral reflectance time series. An ensemble-based solver is employed to compute the biophysical parameters by matching the modelled reflectance as closely as possible to the actual Sentinel-2 reflectance.

Contact: Feng Yin (NCEO/UCL)

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) tools: individual tree extraction and modelling

Tools for processing and analysing TLS point cloud data, in particular to extract individual trees from point clouds containing many trees. A series of iterative clustering, filtering and pruning operations carried out to assess the contents of a point cloud for tree objects and then to extract these, automatically. The result of this can then be used in quantitative reconstruction modelling tools.

Contact: Mat Disney (NCEO/UCL)

BayesLC

This code implements a Monte Carlo sampler for drawing posterior
estimates of land cover from an existing land cover map and its
corresponding confusion matrix.

The algorithm is described in Cripps
et al. (2013) and its application to
GlobCover2009 data in Quaife and Cripps (2016)

Contact: Tristan Quaife (Reading)

STEP (ESA Science Toolbox Exploitation Platform)

Open source tool to process, analyse and visualise Earth Observation (EO) data from ESA’s missions and Third Party Missions. Developed to provide full support for ESA’s Sentinel missions (e.g., Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3) under a common architecture called Sentinel Application Platform (SNAP).

Contact: Joao Carreiras (NCEO/University of Sheffield)

PolSARpro (ESA Polarimetric SAR Data Processing and Educational Tool)

Open source tool to process, analyse and visualise multi-polarised Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data acquired by ESA’s missions (e.g., Envisat ASAR, Sentinel-1), Third Party Missions (e.g., ALOS PALSAR, COSMO-SkyMed, RADARSAT-2, TerraSAR-X) and airborne missions (e.g., NASA/JPL AIRSAR, DLR E-SAR). Includes a fully polarimetric-interferometric coherent SAR scattering and imaging simulator on forest (PolSARproSim).

This tool is owned and maintained by a third party

Contact: Joao Carreiras (NCEO/University of Sheffield)

RAMI online model checker (ROMC)

Contact: Mat Disney (UCL)

3D Vegetation laboratory

3D EO simulation framework developed via ESA funding as part of the Support to Science Element (STSE). 3DVeglab provides an online toolbox of RT modelling tools to enable simulation of (optical) Sentinel 2, 3 and other sensors, for selected highly-detailed 3D modelled scenes. The 3D Veglab toolbox contains 2 different 3D MCRT models, librat developed at UCL and DART developed at CESBIO. 3DVeglab was developed to work as a plug-in module for the ESA BEAM toolkit.

Contact: Mat Disney (NCEO/UCL)

NCEO Kenya forest above ground biomass map 2015 v21.0

GloboLakes: Lake Surface Water Temperature (LSWT) v4.0 (1995-2016)

This dataset contains the GloboLakes LSWT v4.0 of daily observations of Lake Surface Water Temperature (LSWT), its uncertainty and quality levels. The LSWTs are obtained by combining the orbit data from the AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) on MetOpA, AATSR (Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer) on Envisat and ATSR-2 (Along Track Scanning Radiometer) on ERS-2 (European Remote Sensing Satellite). The temperatures from the different instruments have been derived with the same algorithm and harmonised to insure consistency for the period 1995-2016. The GloboLakes LSWT v4.0 was produced by the University of Reading in 2018 for long term observations of surface water temperature for about 1000 lakes globally.

Weighing trees with lasers project: terrestrial laser scanner data; French Guiana, Cayenne, Nourague Nature Reserve plot site

This dataset is comprised of raw data from the NERC-funded, full waveform terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) deployed at sites on three continents, multiple countries and plot locations which, have been re-surveyed at different times. This plot site was situated in French Guiana, Cayenne, Nourague Nautre Reserve. The plot site had the following geographical features; Moisture type: Moist, Elevation: Lowland, Edaphic Type: Terra Firma, Substrate:Mixed, Geology: Pre-Quaternary,Forrestry: Old-growth.