Global Water Use Efficiency Estimates at 70-Meter Resolution

ECOSTRESS Gridded Water Use Efficiency data estimates the ratio of carbon absorbed to water released by plants globally. The product is derived from BESS Gross Primary Production and PT-JPL-SM transpiration data, projected on a 0.0006° grid. It is provided by NASA's LPCLOUD from the instrument launched on the International Space Station in June 2018.

Use Cases

• Modeling regional carbon uptake by analyzing the Gross Primary Production (GPP) layer.
• Assessing plant water stress and irrigation needs by mapping the Water Use Efficiency (WUE) values.
• Masking out non-vegetated areas for analysis using the provided water mask and cloud mask layers.
• Studying temporal changes in ecosystem productivity by comparing GPP estimates across different acquisition dates.
• Validating land surface models with instantaneous, high-resolution (70 m) WUE observations.

Strengths

• Global coverage between 52° N and 52° S latitudes.
• High spatial resolution of 70 meters on a 0.0006° grid.
• Contains multiple data layers including WUE, GPP, cloud mask, and water mask per granule.

Limitations

• Contains known data acquisition gaps, notably a period from May 2019 to April 2023 where only 3 of 5 thermal bands were downloaded, affecting some underlying data.
• Temporal coverage may be non-continuous due to instrument anomalies and safehold events, such as in February 2020.

Provenance

Source

NASA LPCLOUD, from the ECOSTRESS instrument on the International Space Station.

Collection Method

Calculated by dividing BESS Gross Primary Production (GPP) by PT-JPL-SM transpiration.

Time Range

Data acquisition began after instrument launch on June 29, 2018.

Freshness

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Geography

Global, between 52° N and 52° S latitudes.