Day 1-MODIS Policy and Beginning of Products Exploration

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.