Monitoring the State of Global Terrestrial Surfaces Using FAPAR Derived from SeaWiFS, MERIS and MODIS TIP.
Gobron, Nadine; Robustelli, Monica
EC-JRC, ITALY

This paper presents the analysis of a 15-year record of global FAPAR observation showing that significant spatio-temporal variations in vegetation dynamics occurred on regional and continental scales during 2012. The state of vegetation is examined using estimates of the Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) from 1998 to 2012 using SeaWiFS, MERIS and JRC MODIS-TIP products. We propose a procedure taking advantage of the JRC MODIS TIP products, after the loss of ENVISAT for monitoring the state of terrestrial surfaces at global scale: This methodology helps to bridge the gap between MERIS and OLCI land products. Then the global anomalies derived from the analysis of this time series highlight geographical regions subject to changes in 2012 with respect to previous years.