The development of a global LAI and FAPAR product using GCOM-C/SGLI data

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the Global Change Observation Mission - Climate (GCOM-C) satellite on December 23rd, 2017. As a part of the standard products of JAXA’s GCOM-C satellite, we developed the Leaf Area Index (LAI) and the Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) product. In comparison to other global LAI and FAPAR products by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Copernicus Global Land Service (CGLS), our products have the following advantageous features: high spatial and temporal resolution (250 m and daily); the retrieval algorithm (look-up-table) is based on “the Forest Light Environmental Simulator” (FLiES) which is a full 3-D canopy radiative transfer model as well as a vegetation landscape model and a global forest landscape map created for this study. The algorithm and ancillary data sets are completely independent of the existing products that are more or less influenced by the MODIS LAI/FAPAR, providing an alternate and independent source of LAI and FAPAR. The dataset has been created since April 2018 and is freely available on JAXA’s G-Portal site (https://gportal.jaxa.jp/gpr). As a result of accuracy assessment with in-situ data, the Root Mean Square Errors (RMSEs) for total LAI and FAPAR were 0.776 and 0.112, respectively. We also compared our LAI and FAPAR estimates with three existing global datasets (PROBA-V/OLCI, MODIS and VIIRS product). The spatial distribution of LAI and FAPAR showed different characteristics among the datasets although their temporal trends were similar. The differences in estimation results among datasets due to differences in the retrieval algorithms, base map (or land cover data) and input data need to be evaluated in the future.