I like the word free when it comes to things related to education. Looking over the MODIS Policy stuff at https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/lpdaac/products/modis_policies
Redistribution policy: no restictions
Data Pricing: No Charge from LP DAAC
Important stuff
Citation policy states that "These data are distributed by the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), located at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center (lpdaac.usgs.gov)." must be incorporated int whatever work.
They also say if possible to e-mail or send reprints/citations of papers or oral presentations to stay informed with how their data is being used. That is cool, also I wonder if I should do that for my project.
Now on to the Products Table
Found at https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/lpdaac/products/modis_products_table and the use of this is sort of weird. They have carrots for their different categories, which are Radiation budget variables, Ecosystem Variables, and Land Cover Characteristics, but they are actually links. Not a fan
Clicking on them limits the amount of products shown and has a listing of: The Shortname, Platform (aqua/terra), MODIS Product, raster Type, Resolution, Temporal Granularity.
note to self what is a swath raster type?
There are three different categories in the Land Cover Characteristics: Thermal Anomalies and Fire, Land cover, and VCC/VCF. The thermal stuff has a 1km resolution across the board with different temporal granularity. The ones listedn under "Land cover" don't seem to have the best resolutions (500m-5600m) and are only done yearly. And there is only one option for Vegetation Continuous Fields which is also yearly with a resolution of 500m.
I think there is more down below that I could explore but I think I will start with the Thermal Anomalies and fire one that appears to be a daily, Terra, tile of 1000m named MOD14A1 will check back in if any results ensue.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Day 1-MODIS Overview
Meeting with Professor to discuss parameters of project, such as what am I doing this quarter. Which include but are not limited to:
Writing a 20 page paper on the uses of remote sensing in archaeology
Playing with Download-able Remote Sensing data
Reading
Creating a Table with many different listed things
Currently looking at Data for MODIS and have found their Overview page provided at the link below:
https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/lpdaac/products/modis_overview
It has listed different processing Levels for MODIS Land data, which is what we are interested in
Level 2: ha derived geophysical variables at the same resolution and location as level 1 source data
level 2g: Lv2 data mapped on a uniform space-time grid scale (Sinusoidal projection, Tiles are 10 degrees by 10 degrees at the equator)
interesting choice of map projection purpose of this is not exactly defined, probably preserves area
Level 3: gridded variables in derived spatial and/or temporal resolutions
Level 4: model output or results from analysis of lower-level data
this is what we are probably going to be interested in when it comes to looking for material to process and explore for the greater part of the project and looking at what we can do
Band Information
There are 36 different bands that look at reflected or emitted light. I assume this references whether or not the satellite is just reading information the wavelength ranges based on what they reflect given light from the sun. Then the emitted range explores whats either happening to the light or what sort of heat it is emitting since after about band 20 which representing 3.660-3.840 um (micro) they are all temperature related mostly, or humidity.
This sort of information, when downloaded I assume, probably comes up as really good raster data that can be reprojected in different ways. Exciting.
The visual stuff we'll probably be using needs to be between 390-750 nm, ie visible spectrum. I think we discussed using MODIS for general trends on the landscape since the resolution is so huge. (Spatial resolutions are 250m, 500m, and 1000m)Which means useful bands will be from band 1 through about band 15. Though the most useful will probably be the band 1-4 probably that look at vegetation and soil differences.
There are some interesting bands that look at leaf/canopy but I am unsure if this will be useful since areas that we are interested in, end product wise, will probably not have much difference between land canopy/leaf cover since we are interested in an unhappy shrub.
Besides those I believe the forest fires and Volcanoes emitted 3.660-3.840 micrometer things will be interesting since burned areas will provide good visibility and hopefully good land to survey.
Metadata
Looking at the information they provide about the metadata associated with the different tiles I am not quite sure exactly how I will be re-projecting this so its in relation to any other new data that I have, not that there currently is any. I assume that there will be more actual in-depth and understandable things in the metadata once I am using it. The sinusoidal projection is gridded for most MODIS products, apparently, and has a unique sphere measure 6371007.181m. Not quite sure what all of this means.
That's the overview page so far. I think I will or probably look at the MODIS Policies.
I can also navigate to more information about ASTER from the above link and I wonder if it is a better site than the http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/ which I was having some trouble understanding how to navigate.
Writing a 20 page paper on the uses of remote sensing in archaeology
Playing with Download-able Remote Sensing data
Reading
Creating a Table with many different listed things
Currently looking at Data for MODIS and have found their Overview page provided at the link below:
https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/lpdaac/products/modis_overview
It has listed different processing Levels for MODIS Land data, which is what we are interested in
Level 2: ha derived geophysical variables at the same resolution and location as level 1 source data
level 2g: Lv2 data mapped on a uniform space-time grid scale (Sinusoidal projection, Tiles are 10 degrees by 10 degrees at the equator)
interesting choice of map projection purpose of this is not exactly defined, probably preserves area
Level 3: gridded variables in derived spatial and/or temporal resolutions
Level 4: model output or results from analysis of lower-level data
this is what we are probably going to be interested in when it comes to looking for material to process and explore for the greater part of the project and looking at what we can do
Band Information
There are 36 different bands that look at reflected or emitted light. I assume this references whether or not the satellite is just reading information the wavelength ranges based on what they reflect given light from the sun. Then the emitted range explores whats either happening to the light or what sort of heat it is emitting since after about band 20 which representing 3.660-3.840 um (micro) they are all temperature related mostly, or humidity.
This sort of information, when downloaded I assume, probably comes up as really good raster data that can be reprojected in different ways. Exciting.
The visual stuff we'll probably be using needs to be between 390-750 nm, ie visible spectrum. I think we discussed using MODIS for general trends on the landscape since the resolution is so huge. (Spatial resolutions are 250m, 500m, and 1000m)Which means useful bands will be from band 1 through about band 15. Though the most useful will probably be the band 1-4 probably that look at vegetation and soil differences.
There are some interesting bands that look at leaf/canopy but I am unsure if this will be useful since areas that we are interested in, end product wise, will probably not have much difference between land canopy/leaf cover since we are interested in an unhappy shrub.
Besides those I believe the forest fires and Volcanoes emitted 3.660-3.840 micrometer things will be interesting since burned areas will provide good visibility and hopefully good land to survey.
Metadata
Looking at the information they provide about the metadata associated with the different tiles I am not quite sure exactly how I will be re-projecting this so its in relation to any other new data that I have, not that there currently is any. I assume that there will be more actual in-depth and understandable things in the metadata once I am using it. The sinusoidal projection is gridded for most MODIS products, apparently, and has a unique sphere measure 6371007.181m. Not quite sure what all of this means.
That's the overview page so far. I think I will or probably look at the MODIS Policies.
I can also navigate to more information about ASTER from the above link and I wonder if it is a better site than the http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/ which I was having some trouble understanding how to navigate.
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