Accessing NASA data NASA ORNL DAAC (Distributed Active Archiving Center) Oak Ridge National Laboratory

NASA Observing Spacecraft for Earth System Research Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)

How a Polar Orbiting Satellite orbits…

Sunglint Haze Cloud Data provided by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Image processed by Battelle using MODIS HDF Look.

MODIS Aerosol Optical Depth 25 June 2002 Data provided by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Image processed by Battelle using MODIS HDF Look.

NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) Program –centerpiece of NASA’s Earth Science Directorate, largest component in the U.S. Climate Change Science Program –spaced-based observing system –ground-based field campaigns –objective is to enable quick and easy access to data about the earth EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS) –explicitly planned and funded by NASA to make maximum use of the data –data available at 8 Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), organized by scientific discipline EOSDIS Archive The Earth Observing System (EOS) Program

EOSDIS Distributed Active Archive Centers JPL U. Alaska U. Colorado EDC ORNL GSFC LaRC Cryosphere Land Processes SEDAC Socio-economic Biogeochemical Dynamics Sea Ice and Polar Processes Atmospheric Processes Upper Atmosphere, Global Biosphere, and Geophysics Ocean Circulation And Air-sea Interaction

Data Center Earth System Science discipline ASF DAAC- Alaska Satellite Facility U. of Alaska Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Sea Ice, Polar processes, Geophysics GES DAAC - GSFC Earth Sciences Goddard Space Flight Center Atmospheric Composition, Atmospheric dynamics, Global Precipitation, Ocean biology, Ocean dynamics, Solar irradiance GHRC – Global Hydrology Resource Center Nat’l Space Science & Technology Center Hydrologic cycle, Severe Weather Interactions, Lightning, Convection LaRC DAAC – Langley Research Center Radiation budget, clouds, Aerosols, Tropospheric Chemistry LP DAAC – Land processes EROS Data Center (USGS) Land Processes NSIDC DAAC- National Snow and Ice Data U. of Colorado Snow and ice, Cryosphere and climate ORNL DAAC- Oak Ridge National Lab Biogeochemical dynamics, Ecological data, Environmental processes PO,DAAC – Physical Oceanography Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) Oceanic Processes, Air-Sea interactions SEDAC – Socioeceonomic Data and Applications Center Columbia University Population, Sustainability, Geospatial data, Multilateral Environmental Agreements

Getting data from Data Centers Directly from Data Centers websites –Center-unique search-and-order systems –Specialized data set tools Viewing, subsetting, web GIS EOS Data Gateway (EDG)- A NASA site where one can search across all the NASA data centers and also order (soon to be replaced by another system called ECHO). Has browse capability. Global Change Master Directory – Allows one to search across all the NASA data centers plus many other data sites. Over 2,400 providers. Points you to where to order. ( but is not the place to order.) Many of the data sets require special tools for image processing and analysis. These tools are provided by the data centers and are under continual development.

Example of a data center search system - hydrology

EOS Data Gateway

ORNL DAAC ~ Distributed Active Archive Center Mission: Support the needs of NASA’s Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) and Earth Observing System (EOS) Program by assembling, archiving, and distributing terrestrial biogeochemistry and ecosystem dynamics data Sponsor: NASA – Martha Maiden - EOSDIS – Diane Wickland - Earth System Science – Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Is not responsible for satellite downloading. Does get satellite data from other NASA data centers… and then puts it in a format accessible to ecological field researchers.

ORNL DAAC: Roles in EOS 3. Regional and Global Global Studies* Studies* Climate Soils Vegetation Hydroclimatology 2. Validation of Remote Sensing Products Four primary data management roles, supporting: 1. Field Campaigns 6-9 year intensive study of a region: Amazon (LBA) Canada (BOREAS) Southern Africa (SAFARI 2000) BOREAS LBA S2K In-situ Observations ? Remote Sensing LAI/fPAR NPP LAI/fPAR NPP 4. Model Code* Benchmark Models IBIS, BIOME-BGC, LSM Manuscript Models PNeT, Century, Biome-BGC

ORNL DAAC data sets & renewable energy? Regional & global data relevant to hydropower –Climate collections - Several global climate data sets. Climate data include measured and modeled values for variables such as temperature, precipitation, humidity, radiation, wind velocity, and cloud cover –Hydroclimatology collections - data on streamflow and climatology. The data were collected with a range of frequencies (daily and monthly) and are from meteorological and streamflow discharge stations in the U.S. –River discharge - The Global River Discharge (RivDIS) data set contains monthly discharge measurements for 1018 stations located throughout the world. The period of record varies widely from station to station, with a mean of 21.5 years.

ORNL DAAC data sets & renewable energy? Regional & global data relevant to bioenergy –Climate collections - Several global climate data sets. Climate data include measured and modeled values for variables such as temperature, precipitation, humidity, radiation, wind velocity, and cloud cover –Soil Collection - data on the physical and chemical properties of soils, including soil carbon and nitrogen, soil water- holding capacity, soil respiration, and soil texture. The data are gridded at spatial scales ranging from regional to global. –Vegetation Collections - Gridded data on vegetation from regional to continental scales. Information about vegetation data archived at the ORNL DAAC is available on the Leaf Area Index Web page. The DAAC also offers data from the Net Primary Productivity Database, which contains biomass and NPP estimates.Leaf Area Index Net Primary Productivity Database

MODIS ASCII Subsets: Remote Sensing Products for Field Sites Bob Cook, Steve Margle, Susan Holladay, and Suresh Kumar ORNL DAAC Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA

 Subsets of Terra and Aqua MODIS Land Products for 280 sites worldwide (field sites or flux towers) in ASCII format  7 km x 7 km centered on flux tower or field sites  Two annual products, four 8-day products, two 16-day products, and calculated albedo, from 2000 to present MODIS ASCII Subsets (Coll. 4) MODIS Products Surface Reflectance Surface Temperature Land Cover NDVI / EVI LAI / fPAR Net Photosynthesis Annual NPP Albedo (calc) Reflectance – BRDF Adjusted

Getting MODIS Data from the ORNL DAAC

NDVI Time series for cropland in Michigan Dec 02Feb 02Apr 02Mar 02Jan 03 Greenup (Above images) – Matches with time series Also 2001, seems to be a special case – Scope for further analysis Location from Google maps Location * Images from USGS Global Visualization Viewer

Multiple paths to access data FTP – most popular method Picklists –Site, investigator, land cover class, network WebGIS –Site location plus background layers GeoTIFF file picklist –with WebGIS Google Earth –MODIS Subset metadata file that opens in Google Earth application

Using Google Earth to Access Subsets

NDVI at Lost Creek LAI at Lost Creek Pixel Values Mean Value of Pixels Percent of Pixels that meet QC Criteria

Albedo (Visible) NDVI Pixel Values Mean Value of Pixels Percent of Pixels that meet QC Criteria Beginning to compile site data for comparison

ASCII tiles (per SDS) Inventory Acquisition and Processing of MODIS Tiles: Tool for North America MODISDataPool HDF Tiles Inventory Automatic FTP pull from Data Pool ORNL DAAC MODIS Reprojection Tool: Conversion to Binary LP DAAC 1200 x 1200 km ORNL Code: Conversion to ASCII SDS = Science Data Set Files for User Interface Computer Resources Dedicated Server 10 TB RAID storage (capacity through 2009 for 1.5 TB/y) Temporary

User Interface User selects center coordinates or site, areal extent, and period of interest Processing of time series (selection of tiles, mosaicking, generating time series data file and graphs) takes 10 to 60 minutes for most products (depends on area, time period, and product) URL with graphs and pointers to data files is ed to user

EVI Southern California Time Series Example Center Pixel Mean Value of Pixels Percent of Pixels that meet QC Criteria

Land Cover Visualization

Mean (std dev) for pixels with same land cover as the center pixel (20 of 49 pixels) Center pixel = Woody Savannas Center Pixel Mean Value of Pixels Percent of Pixels that meet QC Criteria Time Series Example

Data Download Options

Importing ASCII Grid Data into GIS/Image processing software Table of Contents Importing data into: ArcGIS 9.x ENVI ArcView 3.x GRASS Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Importing the ASCII Grid data into ArcGIS 9.x Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC Go to Table of Contents

Example File : GRID.MOD13A2.asc MODIS ASCII Subsets: Data Visualization [MOD13A2] Terra Vegetation Indices (NDVI, EVI) USA, Walker Branch Watershed, Oak Ridge, Tennessee Centered on Latitude [ ] Longitude [ ] 7 Kilometers [7 Pixels] Wide and 7 Kilometers [7 Pixels] High Requested Time Span November 2005 to November 2005 For a PRJ file, access For a prj.adf file, access MODIS HDF TileMOD13A2.A h11v hdf -----START Scientific Data Set (Band): 1_km_16_days_NDVI, MODIS Date: A (Nov. 1, 2005)----- ncols 7 nrows 7 xllcorner yllcorner cellsize nodata_value END Scientific Data Set (Band): 1_km_16_days_NDVI, MODIS Date: A (Nov. 1, 2005)----- MODIS HDF TileMOD13A2.A h11v hdf -----START Scientific Data Set (Band): 1_km_16_days_NDVI, MODIS Date: A (Nov. 17, 2005)----- ncols 7 nrows 7 xllcorner yllcorner cellsize nodata_value END Scientific Data Set (Band): 1_km_16_days_NDVI, MODIS Date: A (Nov. 17, 2005)----- Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Step 1 Copy contents between “-----START Scientific Data Set (Band)…………..” And “-----END Scientific Data Set (Band)……………...” Into a separate file. If there are more than one START-END entries, copy contents within each of the START-END statements into individual files like: File GRID_MOD13A2_A _1_km_16_days_NDVI.asc from example file GRID.MOD13A2.asc ncols 7 nrows 7 xllcorner yllcorner cellsize nodata_value Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Importing the individual file GRID_MOD13A2_A _1_km_16_days_NDVI.asc into ArcGIS : Step 2 Using ArcToolbox from ESRI’s ArcGIS 9.x software Select: Conversion Tools  To Raster  ASCII to Raster Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Step 3 Provide path to ASCII file (GRID_MOD13A2_A _1_km_16_days_NDVI.asc ) and Output Raster (MD13A205305) Click OK Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Step 4 After converting to Raster the output raster (MD13A205305) would automatically load into ArcMap Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Export this file (MD13A205305) into ArcGIS GRID Step 5 Right Click on the file to Export Provide output filename (e.g. md13a ) and format Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Setting up the projection Download file prj.adf from copy the prj.adf file into the GRID file directory (md13a ) created in the previous step Step 6 Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

If the projection isn't defined, use the following file to define the projection. Download file modis.prj from Copy this file into \Coordinate Systems\Projected Coordinate Systems\World\Sphere-based and manually set the projection for the file Step 7 Load the GRID file in ArcMap – Make sure that the projection is defined on the dataset Final output md13a with projection set, overlaid with the MODIS site locations Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC