NASA ORNL DAAC
(Distributed Active Archiving Center)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory http://www.daac.ornl.gov/

NASA Observing
Spacecraft for Earth
System Research
Moderate Resolution
Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS)

Haze
Cloud
Data provided by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Image processed by Battelle using MODIS HDF Look.
Sunglint

Data provided by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Image processed by Battelle using MODIS HDF Look.

The Earth Observing System (EOS) Program
EOSDIS Archive
•NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) Program
– centerpiece of NASA’s Earth Science Directorate, largest component in the U.S.
Climate Change Science Program
– spaced-based observing system
– ground-based field campaigns
– objective is to enable quick and easy access to data about the earth
•EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS)
– explicitly planned and funded by NASA to make maximum use of the data
– data available at 8 Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), organized by scientific discipline

EOSDIS Distributed Active Archive Centers
JPL
Ocean Circulation
And Air-sea Interaction
U. Colorado
Cryosphere
EDC
Land Processes
GSFC
Upper Atmosphere,
Global Biosphere, and
Geophysics
U. Alaska
Sea Ice and
Polar Processes
SEDAC
Socio-economic
LaRC
Atmospheric
Processes
ORNL
Biogeochemical
Dynamics

Data Center
ASF DAAC- Alaska Satellite
Facility
U. of Alaska
GES DAAC - GSFC Earth
Sciences
Goddard Space Flight Center
GHRC – Global Hydrology
Resource Center
Nat’l Space Science &
Technology Center
LaRC DAAC –
Langley Research Center
LP DAAC – Land processes
EROS Data Center (USGS)
NSIDC DAAC- National Snow and Ice Data
U. of Colorado
ORNL DAAC-
Oak Ridge National
Lab
Earth System Science discipline
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Sea Ice, Polar processes, Geophysics
Atmospheric Composition , Atmospheric dynamics, Global Precipitation,
Ocean biology, Ocean dynamics, Solar irradiance
Hydrologic cycle, Severe Weather Interactions, Lightning, Convection
Radiation budget, clouds, Aerosols, Tropospheric Chemistry
Land Processes
Snow and ice, Cryosphere and climate
Biogeochemical dynamics, Ecological data, Environmental processes
PO,DAAC – Physical
Oceanography
Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL)
SEDAC – Socioeceonomic
Data and Applications Center
Columbia University
Oceanic Processes, Air-Sea interactions
Population, Sustainability, Geospatial data, Multilateral Environmental
Agreements

• Directly from Data Centers websites
– Center-unique search-and-order systems
– Specialized data set tools
• Viewing, subsetting, web GIS
• EOS Data Gateway (EDG)A NASA site where one can search across all the NASA data centers and also order (soon to be replaced by another system called ECHO). Has browse capability. http://eos.nasa.gov/imswelcome
• Global Change Master Directory – Allows one to search across all the
NASA data centers plus many other data sites. Over 2,400 providers.
Points you to where to order. ( but is not the place to order.) http://gcmd.nasa.gov
• Many of the data sets require special tools for image processing and analysis. These tools are provided by the data centers and are under continual development.

http://ghrc.msfc.nasa.gov/ http://datapool.nsstc.nasa.gov

Example of a data center search system - hydrology

http://eos.nasa.gov/imswelcome

http://gcmd.nasa.gov/

ORNL DAAC ~ Distributed Active Archive Center http://www.daac.ornl.gov/
• Mission: Support the needs of NASA’s Earth Science
Enterprise (ESE) and Earth Observing System (EOS)
Program by assembling, archiving, and distributing terrestrial biogeochemistry and ecosystem dynamics data
• Sponsor: NASA
– Martha Maiden - EOSDIS
– Diane Wickland - Earth System Science – Carbon Cycle and
Ecosystems
• Is not responsible for satellite downloading. Does get satellite data from other NASA data centers… and then puts it in a format accessible to ecological field researchers.

Four primary data management roles, supporting:
1. Field Campaigns
•
6-9 year intensive study of a region:
•
Amazon (LBA)
•
Canada
(BOREAS)
•
Southern Africa
(SAFARI 2000)
LBA
BOREAS
LBA
S2K
S2K
2. Validation of Remote Sensing
Products
In-situ
Observations
LAI/fPAR
NPP
?
Remote Sensing
LAI/fPAR
NPP
3. Regional and
Global
Studies*
•
Climate
•
Soils
•
Vegetation
•
Hydroclimatology
4. Model Code*
•
Benchmark Models
•
IBIS, BIOME-BGC, LSM
•
Manuscript Models
•
PNeT, Century, Biome-BGC

• Regional & global data relevant to hydropower
– Climate collections Several global climate data sets. Climate data include measured and modeled values for variables such as temperature, precipitation, humidity, radiation, wind velocity, and cloud cover
– Hydroclimatology collections data on streamflow and climatology. The data were collected with a range of frequencies (daily and monthly) and are from meteorological and streamflow discharge stations in the U.S.
– River discharge The Global River Discharge (RivDIS) data set contains monthly discharge measurements for 1018 stations located throughout the world. The period of record varies widely from station to station, with a mean of 21.5 years .

• Regional & global data relevant to bioenergy
– Climate collections Several global climate data sets. Climate data include measured and modeled values for variables such as temperature, precipitation, humidity, radiation, wind velocity, and cloud cover
– Soil Collection data on the physical and chemical properties of soils, including soil carbon and nitrogen, soil waterholding capacity, soil respiration, and soil texture. The data are gridded at spatial scales ranging from regional to global.
– Vegetation Collections Gridded data on vegetation from regional to continental scales. Information about vegetation data archived at the ORNL DAAC is available on the Leaf
Area Index Web page. The DAAC also offers data from the
Net Primary Productivity Database , which contains biomass and NPP estimates.

Bob Cook, Steve Margle,
Susan Holladay, and Suresh Kumar
ORNL DAAC
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Distributed Active Archive Center
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA

MODIS ASCII
Subsets (Coll. 4)
 Subsets of Terra and Aqua MODIS Land Products for 280 sites worldwide (field sites or flux towers) in ASCII format
 7 km x 7 km centered on flux tower or field sites
 Two annual products, four 8-day products, two 16-day products, and calculated albedo, from 2000 to present
MODIS Products
Surface Reflectance
Surface Temperature
Land Cover
NDVI / EVI
LAI / fPAR
Net Photosynthesis
Annual NPP
Albedo (calc)
Reflectance – BRDF
Adjusted

Getting MODIS Data from the ORNL DAAC

Dec 02 Jan 03 Feb 02 Mar 02 Apr 02
* Images from
USGS Global Visualization Viewer http://glovis.usgs.gov/
Location
Location from Google maps
Greenup (Above images)
– Matches with time series
Also 2001, seems to be a special case
– Scope for further analysis
NDVI Time series for cropland in Michigan

• FTP – most popular method
• Picklists
– Site, investigator, land cover class, network
• WebGIS
– Site location plus background layers
• GeoTIFF file picklist
– with WebGIS
• Google Earth
– MODIS Subset metadata file that opens in
Google Earth application

Using Google Earth to Access Subsets
LAI at Lost Creek
NDVI at Lost Creek
Pixel Values
Mean Value of Pixels
Percent of Pixels that meet QC Criteria

Comparison of MODIS and Tower NDVI
Missouri Ozark Site
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0 50
Tower NDVI
MODIS NDVI
100 150 200 250 300 350
Julian Day in 2005
Beginning to compile site data for comparison
Comparison of MODIS and Tower Albedo
Missouri Ozark Site
0.2
Tower global radiation
MODIS shortwave (ot = 0.2)
Tower visble
MODIS Visible (ot = 0.2)
0.1
0
0 100 200
Julian Day in 2005
300
NDVI
Albedo
(Visible)
Pixel Values
Mean Value of Pixels
Percent of Pixels that meet QC Criteria

Acquisition and Processing of MODIS Tiles:
Tool for North America
LP DAAC
Automatic
FTP pull from
Data Pool
ORNL DAAC
Inventory
MODIS
Data
Pool HDF Tiles
Temporary
MODIS
Reprojection
Tool:
Conversion to Binary
ORNL Code:
Conversion to ASCII
Inventory
ASCII tiles
(per SDS)
1200 x 1200 km
Files for User Interface
Computer Resources
Dedicated Server
10 TB RAID storage
(capacity through 2009 for 1.5 TB/y)
SDS = Science Data Set

• User selects center coordinates or site, areal extent, and period of interest
• Processing of time series (selection of tiles, mosaicking, generating time series data file and graphs) takes 10 to 60 minutes for most products (depends on area, time period, and product)
• URL with graphs and pointers to data files is emailed to user

Center Pixel
Mean Value of Pixels
Percent of Pixels that meet QC Criteria
EVI
Southern California

Land Cover
Visualization

Center Pixel
Mean Value of Pixels
Percent of Pixels that meet QC Criteria
Mean (std dev) for pixels with same land cover as the center pixel (20 of
49 pixels)
Center pixel = Woody Savannas

Importing ASCII Grid Data into GIS/Image processing software
Table of Contents
Importing data into:
•
ArcGIS 9.x
•
ENVI
•
ArcView 3.x
•
GRASS
Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Go to Table of Contents
Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Example File : GRID.MOD13A2.asc
MODIS ASCII Subsets: Data Visualization
[MOD13A2] Terra Vegetation Indices (NDVI, EVI)
USA, Walker Branch Watershed, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Centered on Latitude [35.958767] Longitude [-84.287433]
7 Kilometers [7 Pixels] Wide and 7 Kilometers [7 Pixels] High
Requested Time Span November 2005 to November 2005
For a PRJ file, access http://daac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/MODIS/GR_common/modis.prj
For a prj.adf file, access http://daac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/MODIS/GR_common/prj.adf
MODIS HDF Tile MOD13A2.A2005305.h11v05.004.2005325075111.hdf
-----START Scientific Data Set (Band): 1_km_16_days_NDVI, MODIS Date: A2005305 (Nov. 1, 2005)----ncols 7 nrows 7 xllcorner -7589988.98
yllcorner 3995608.83
cellsize 926.62543305583381
nodata_value -9999999
5579 5846 5940 5769 5566 5869 5776
6173 5722 5876 5912 5920 5882 5632
5844 5812 5972 5904 5154 4966 5282
5786 5765 5822 5695 5739 5817 5992
5609 5094 4333 5790 5763 5793 5863
5602 5499 5844 5811 5210 5436 5728
4749 5674 5419 2617 4012 5607 5219
-----END Scientific Data Set (Band): 1_km_16_days_NDVI, MODIS Date: A2005305 (Nov. 1, 2005)-----
MODIS HDF Tile MOD13A2.A2005321.h11v05.004.2005342022515.hdf
-----START Scientific Data Set (Band): 1_km_16_days_NDVI, MODIS Date: A2005321 (Nov. 17, 2005)----ncols 7 nrows 7 xllcorner -7589988.98
yllcorner 3995608.83
cellsize 926.62543305583381
nodata_value -9999999
5279 5480 5584 5584 5226 5248 5275
5781 5508 5517 5383 5347 5281 5051
5634 5554 5571 5511 4825 4557 5344
5635 5375 5293 5432 5298 5562 5581
5386 4646 4660 5279 5446 5480 5393
5396 5118 5750 5563 4825 5260 5587
4774 5425 5047 3500 4174 5187 4955
-----END Scientific Data Set (Band): 1_km_16_days_NDVI, MODIS Date: A2005321 (Nov. 17, 2005)-----
Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Step 1
Copy contents between
“-----START Scientific Data Set (Band)…………..”
And
“-----END Scientific Data Set (Band)……………...”
Into a separate file.
If there are more than one START-END entries, copy contents within each of the START-END statements into individual files like:
File GRID_MOD13A2_A2005305 _1_km_16_days_NDVI.asc
from example file GRID.MOD13A2.asc
ncols 7 nrows 7 xllcorner -7589988.98
yllcorner 3995608.83
cellsize 926.62543305583381
nodata_value -9999999
5579 5846 5940 5769 5566 5869 5776
6173 5722 5876 5912 5920 5882 5632
5844 5812 5972 5904 5154 4966 5282
5786 5765 5822 5695 5739 5817 5992
5609 5094 4333 5790 5763 5793 5863
5602 5499 5844 5811 5210 5436 5728
4749 5674 5419 2617 4012 5607 5219
Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Step 2
Importing the individual file
GRID_MOD13A2_A2005305 _1_km_16_days_NDVI.asc
into ArcGIS :
Using ArcToolbox from ESRI’s ArcGIS 9.x software
Select:
Conversion Tools  To Raster  ASCII to Raster
Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Step 3
Provide path to ASCII file (GRID_MOD13A2_A2005305 _1_km_16_days_NDVI.asc ) and Output Raster (MD13A205305)
Click OK
Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Step 4
After converting to Raster the output raster (MD13A205305) would automatically load into ArcMap
Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Step 5
Export this file (MD13A205305) into ArcGIS GRID
Right Click on the file to Export
Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC
Provide output filename (e.g. md13a2053051) and format

Step 6
Setting up the projection
Download file prj.adf from http://daac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/MODIS/GR_common/prj.adf
copy the prj.adf file into the GRID file directory (md13a2053051) created in the previous step
Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC

Step 7
Load the GRID file in ArcMap – Make sure that the projection is defined on the dataset
Final output md13a2053051 with projection set, overlaid with the MODIS site locations
If the projection isn't defined, use the following file to define the projection.
Download file modis.prj from http://daac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/MODIS/GR_common/modis.prj
Copy this file into
<ESRI installation Folder>\Coordinate Systems\Projected Coordinate Systems\World\Sphere-based and manually set the projection for the file
Prepared by Suresh Kumar on March 10 th 2006, ORNL DAAC