NASA EOS LAND VAL: Forest, Urban, and Vegetation Field Measurements

1,513 trees across 30 plots in Costa Rican forests provide diameter, height, and crown data for biomass and canopy profile calculations. Temperature and humidity at 12 locations in Maryland from 2013 to 2015 offer 15-minute interval data for studying urban surface heating. Derived 30-meter resolution Leaf Area Index maps for selected Canadian sites support modeling land-atmosphere exchanges.

Use Cases

• Validate satellite-based biomass estimates based on field measurements of tree diameter and height.
• Study the impact of surface types like asphalt and grass on urban heating based on campus-scale sensor data.
• Model carbon and water exchange at regional scales based on high-resolution Leaf Area Index maps.
• Analyze forest structure and recovery in different land-use histories based on plot-level vegetation profiles.

Strengths

• Includes ground-truth data for 1,513 individual trees across primary, logged, and secondary forest plots.
• Urban climate data covers a two-year time range with measurements at 15-minute intervals.
• Leaf Area Index maps provide 30-meter spatial resolution for protected validation sites.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

NASA EOS LAND VAL Project, likely via AWS Open Data.

Collection Method

Field measurements at biological stations and sensor deployments on a campus.

Time Range

November 2013 to November 2015 for the urban climate component; temporal coverage for forest and LAI data is unspecified.

Freshness

null

Geography

La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica; Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland, USA; selected sites in Canada.