Global quasi-daily fractional vegetation cover estimated from the DSCOVR EPIC directional hotspot dataset

Abstract

Fractional Vegetation Cover (FVC) represents the planar fraction of the land-surface covered by green foliage, and its dynamics are important for an enhanced understanding of ecosystems especially how they respond to climate change. The lack of global near-real-time satellite-based products restricts the application of FVC in ecosystem modeling, climate change, and vegetation phenology studies. Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) onboard Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft provides daily spectral reflectance of the entire sunlit Earth in the near Hotspot directions. Hotspot observations (i.e., observation in Hotspot direction which has the peak backscattering reflected radiation) with only sunlit vegetation and sunlit soil components are more suitable for FVC estimation with a two-endmember mixture model as such observations exclude contributions from shaded vegetation and soil components. In this study, an algorithm for retrieving quasi-daily FVC from EPIC based on two-endmember mixture and gap fraction models is developed. Analyses of its performance predict that the average Root-Mean-Square Deviations (RMSDs) of retrievals in FVC units is below 0.050 when compared with reference values. The RMSD is 0.043 when compared to field-based Landsat reference FVC, which confirms lower retrieval uncertainty than FVC retrieved from Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) satellite products such as MODIS, VIIRS, and GEOV2 with RMSDs 0.049– 0.087. The comparison analyses suggest a good consistency between EPIC FVC and FVC products from LEO and geostationary (GEO) satellites sensor, SEVIRI, with RMSD values less than 0.129. EPIC allows for quasi-daily FVC estimation across the global terrestrial surface at 10 km resolution, which is an important development for numerous biophysical applications.