Land Surface Phenology at 104 Flux Tower Sites in North America

PlanetScope satellite imagery provides high-resolution land surface phenology data for 104 AmeriFlux and NEON eddy covariance tower sites. The dataset captures the start, peak, and end of vegetation activity across five growing seasons from 2017 to 2021. It is produced by ORNL_CLOUD and is available in NetCDF, GeoJSON, and HTML formats.

Use Cases

• Assessing satellite-based land surface phenology products using ground-truthed vegetation index metrics.
• Evaluating predictions from land surface models with observed timing of phenological changes (start, peak, end).
• Analyzing processes controlling seasonality of ecosystem fluxes using data co-located with eddy covariance towers.
• Studying vegetation dynamics across different plant functional types and climates in North America.

Strengths

• High 3-meter spatial resolution derived from PlanetScope imagery.
• Covers 104 distinct sites across a range of plant functional types and climates.
• Includes five consecutive years of data for the 2017-2021 growing seasons.
• Provides quality assurance flags alongside vegetation index metrics.

Limitations

• Exact row count, file size, and complete column list are not specified in any source.
• Conflicting last update dates: one source lists 2026-03-13, another lists 2021-12-31.

Provenance

Source

ORNL_CLOUD

Collection Method

Derived from PlanetScope satellite imagery centered over AmeriFlux and NEON eddy covariance towers.

Time Range

2017-2021

Freshness

2026-03-13 01:06:58.820575

Geography

North America, specifically 10-km x 10-km windows around 104 tower sites.