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NCA-LDAS other LSM parameters

This page describes the sources and usage of the other LSM parameters and datasets used by the NCA-LDAS land-surface models.

Greenness

Noah-3.3 used greenness vegetation fraction data from the NESDIS/NOAA 0.144-degree monthly climatology. The data is a composite of a 5-year (1985-1989) dataset using the AVHRR satellites. For further documentation, please see the "Background Surface Fields" section of the community Noah (and Noah-MP) LSMs webpage.

Also see the following for additional reference:
Gutman, G., and A. Ignatov, 1997: The derivation of green vegetation fraction from NOAA/AVHRR data for use in numerical weather prediction models.  Int. J. Remote Sensing., 19(8), 1533-1543.

The LIS group re-gridded from 0.144-degrees to the 1/8th-degree NCA-LDAS grid using the Land surface Data Toolkit (LDT). The data is assumed to be valid at the 15th of each month. The LIS software linearly interpolates between the months to calculate daily values for each NCA-LDAS grid point.

LAI

Noah-3.3 did not use an LAI dataset, but calculated the LAI as a function of greenness and the maximum/minimum LAI as a function of the vegetation class at each grid point.

Albedo

Noah-3.3 used background (snow-free) surface albedo data also from the NESDIS/NOAA 0.144-degree monthly climatology. The data is a composite of a 5-year (1985-1989) dataset using the AVHRR satellites. For further documentation, please see the "Background Surface Fields" section of the community Noah (and Noah-MP) LSMs webpage.

Also see the following for additional reference:
Csiszar, I., and G. Gutman, 1999: Mapping global land surface albedo from NOAA AVHRR.  J. Geophys. Res., 104(D6), 6215-6228.

The LIS group re-gridded from 0.144-degrees to the 1/8th-degree NCA-LDAS grid using the Land surface Data Toolkit (LDT). The data is assumed to be valid at the 15th of each month. The LIS software linearly interpolates between the months to calculate daily values for each NCA-LDAS grid point.

Crop and irrigation maps

To represent crop presence and some irrigation effects in the Noah LSM simulations, we utilize the crop and irrigation maps from Ozdogan et al. (2010), who placed them on the same 1/8th-degree domain as used in NCA-LDAS. The crop map was derived by adding 19 crop types from crop-specific census data, referred to as the "CROPMAP" dataset (from Leff et al., 2004), to the UMD 13-class vegetation map on the NCA-LDAS domain. The irrigation fraction or "intensity" map is derived from Terra's MODIS retrievals and other satellite- and climate-based ancillary datasets, described in Ozdogan and Gutman (2008).

Other Noah LSM parameters

Other Noah-3.3 LSM parameter fields (such as maximum snow albedo, bottom soil temperature, and slopetype index) were obtained from the "Background Surface Fields" section of the community Noah (and Noah-MP) LSMs webpage.