North American Carbon Program Original Model and Observation Data

2008 data from the North American Carbon Program Regional Synthesis contains originally-submitted observation measurements, terrestrial biosphere model outputs, and inverse model simulations. It provides nine data packages of remote sensing and ground measurements (including MODIS GPP, NPP, and FIA forest biomass) and results from 19 terrestrial biosphere and eight inverse models. The data was contributed by various investigator teams and archived by NASA's ORNL DAAC.

Use Cases

• Comparing outputs from 19 different terrestrial biosphere models (TBM) for carbon flux estimation.
• Validating remote sensing products like MODIS GPP and NPP with ground-based measurements such as FIA forest biomass.
• Using inverse model (IM) simulations to constrain regional carbon source and sink estimates.
• Analyzing vegetation indices (MODIS fPar, LAI, EVI, NDVI) for ecosystem productivity studies.
• Investigating crop net primary production (NASS crop NPP) and flux anomalies across North American regions.

Strengths

• Includes original, traceable data from nine observation packages and 27 distinct models (19 TBM, 8 IM).
• Data was processed and transformed into archival formats (e.g., CSV, GeoTIFF, NetCDF) by the ORNL DAAC.
• Cross-platform presence on Data.gov and NASA EarthData signals established importance and curation.

Limitations

• Key metadata conflicts exist: the last update date is listed as both 2008-12 -31 and a future date of 2026-03-13.
• Specific row counts, column names, and dataset size are unknown across all sources.
• The license is ambiguously noted as 'other-license-specified' without clear terms.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), via the ORNL DAAC and NACP Modeling and Synthesis Thematic Data Center (MAST-DC).

Collection Method

Data was originally submitted by various investigator teams for the North American Carbon Program (NACP) Regional Synthesis and later processed and archived.

Time Range

2008

Freshness

2008-12-31

Geography

North America