Day 6-ASTER, Data and Cost

The important stuff with this project is the cost of course and so I am going to explore some more the types of products and how much they will cost. I don't remember exactly what we were going to use the ASTER data for (I am pretty sure it was a veg index) but I'm not sure if its going to be of a resolution that we can use since 15m is still pretty big. Although it might not be too bad since it at least cuts down the patches we are looking at.

Data

Looking at http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/data_products.asp for the data products. Each one has a labeled "level", "product" (by which they mean name), "description", "release status" (which relates to the accuracy of the data and its ability to be used in scientific publications), and "release notes".

Looking at the descriptions and a couple of the more in-depth descriptions provided by clicking on the "product" hyperlinks, I am unsure as to which product we want to be looking at. I think we want a "radiance" product preferably corrected for Atmospheric and topographic corrections. Actually I think we want Surface reflectance since I believe that is what will give a good spectral signature (for the maquis). That would therefore be the level 2 data. They have differing amounts of corrections for each but looking at AST07 Surface reflectance-VNIR,SWIR which has derived surface radiance with topographic corrections I am unsure about the product background info. It doesn't look like its been updated since 2002 and I wonder if there are better ways of looking at these things. It also has to be ordered, which I think is fine.

This particular product looks at 9 bands (band 1- band 9) as defined by March 2002 information. I apparently have to order all of my data through Glovis or WIST and the page doesn't really give good information about obtaining the data or using it and some of the links that it provides don't work. However, going to a different site does give more information ( https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/lpdaac/products/aster_products_table/on_demand/surface_radiance_vnir_crosstalk_corrected_swir/v1/ast_09xt) on these products.

Cost

Looking at the better ASTER information via the LP DAAC site it looks like only a global DEM and the ASTER L1B for the US and territories data is available at no charge and is available through WIST and GloVis. Higher Level data is available through Japan's Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis Center (ERSDAC) at a charge. I will follow the link to see what sorts of charges there will be.