LBA-ECO LC-22 Vegetation Cover Types from MODIS, 500-m, South America: 2000-2001

This data set contains proportional estimates for the vegetative cover types of tree cover, herbaceous vegetation, and bare ground over South America for the period 2000-2001. These products were derived from all seven bands of the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor onboard NASA's Terra satellite. A set of 500-m MOD09A1 Surface Reflectance 8-day minimum blue reflectance composites were used as input data. To reduce the presence of cloud shadows, The data were converted to 40-day composites using a second darkest albedo (sum of blue, green, and red bands), and the Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF) algorithmn was utilized (Hansen et al., 2002). The VCF shows how much of a land cover such as forest or grassland exists anywhere on the land surface. The VCF product may depict areas of heterogeneous land cover better than traditional discrete classification schemes which shows where land cover types are concentrated. There are three images provided in GeoTIFF format.