LTER-NASA Standardization Workshop

A workshop will be held at the HJ. Andrews Experimental Forest from May 1-3, 1996 involving LTER scientists and NASA collaborators. The focus of the workshop is standardization of combined field, modeling, and remote sensing methods across the LTER Network for creation of biophysical spatial data layers at the LTER site level, and on comparison of these with data layers created at the global scale by NASA scientists. The workshop will help to kickoff a study partially funded by NASA’s Terrestrial Ecology Program in the Office of Mission to Planet Earth, in which 14 LTER sites and NASA’s MODIS Land (MODLAND) Science Team are involved. Primary biophysical variables of interest include land cover class (LCC), leaf area index (LAI), and aboveground net primary productivity (NPP). Each site has defined a minimum 100 kmz area for which these data layers will be developed at a grain size of 25 m. Several methods are proposed for estimating each of the three biosphere variables at all sites, and these will be used to help establish error bounds on the variable estimates. A number of different strategies are proposed for spatially aggregating the fine-grain site maps to a coarse grain (1 km) so that they can be compared to maps of the same three biosphere variables developed by the MODLAND Science Team.

This coordinated, multi-site grain-size aggregation exercise presents the opportunity to grapple with one of the most vexing current problems in ecology, that of the effects on estimates of important biosphere variables of scaling from a fine grain to a coarse grain. Several methods are proposed for addressing this issue, including the calculation of geostatistical and landscape metrics. The intent is to characterize the sites, in terms of the LCC, LAI, and NPP at several spatial scales to elucidate similarities and differences among the multiple sites and biomes and between the MODLAND maps and site maps. The workshop is a crucial step in the future development of LTER and NASA programmatic and science interactions.

For more information: Warren B. Cohen, 503/750-7322, wCohen @LTERnet.edu