Fractional cover - MODIS, CSIRO Land and Water algorithm, Australia coverage

Updated: 2019-05-17

Vegetation fractional cover represents the exposed proportion of Photosynthetic Vegetation (PV), Non-Photosynthetic Vegetation (NPV) and Bare Soil (BS) within each pixel. In forested canopies the photosynthetic or non-photosynthetic portions of trees may obscure those of the grass layer and/or bare soil. The MODIS Fractional Cover product is derived from the MODIS Nadir BRDF-Adjusted Reflectance (NBAR) product (MCD43A4, collection 5). A suite of derivative products are also produced including monthly fractional cover, total vegetation cover (PV+NPV), and anomaly of total cover against the time series. Ground cover, as total cover minus an estimate of tree cover, is available as a separate product. MODIS fractional cover has been validated for Australia. A global product is also produced with the same algorithm using the global NBAR product MCD43C1 (collection 5, 0.05 degrees spatial resolution).