Regional Initiatives - GOFC/GOLD
Global Observation of Forest and Land Cover Dynamics (GOFC/GOLD Regional Networks)
The NASA LCLUC program is contributing to the Global Observation of Forest Cover/Global Observation of Land-cover Dynamics (GOFC/GOLD), a Global Terrestrial Observation System (GTOS) program. Land-cover and fire are two focus areas for the program.
The goal of the program is to help ensure that the international science and applications requirements for satellite data are met and that proven satellite systems and analysis methods are transitioned from research to the operational domain. Such a transition would for example enable the periodic assessment of global land-cover. One of the aims of the program is to improve the use of and access to current satellite observations and facilitate their integration with other data types. To achieve this, GOFC/GOLD has developed a number of regional networks of scientists, data users and data providers, which are benefiting from improved access to NASA data and research collaboration with NASA scientists. Regional network activities exist in Southern Africa (the Miombo Network and SAFNET), Northern Eurasia (NERIN), Central Africa (OSFAC), Southeast Asia (SEARRIN), South America (REDLATIF) and Australia.
Additional information can be found at the GOFC/GOLD website, and at the GOFC-Fire website
Example GOFC/GOLD Project: Fire product development and evaluation in Northern Eurasia
Ivan Csiszar, Tatiana Loboda (UMD/Geography), Dimitry Ershov (CFEP), Alexey Mazurov (SRI), Vladimir Belov (IAO), Anatoly Sukhinin (SFI) and Sergei Tashchilin (ISTP)
Scientists at the University of Maryland (UMD) are working together with Russian collaborators to improve the quality and spatio-temporal coverage of biomass burning data in Northern Eurasia. Major partner institutions in Russia include the Center for Forest Ecology and Productivity (CFEP; Moscow), the Space Research Institute (SRI; Moscow), the Institute of Atmospheric Optics (IAO; Tomsk), the Sukachev Forest Institute (SFI; Krasnoyarsk) and the Institute of Solar and Terrestrial Physics (ISTP; Irkutsk). This partnership represents the core of the Northern Eurasian regional GOFC/GOLD (Global Observation of Forest Cover / Global Observation of Land Cover Dynamics) fire network. In a NASA New Investigator in Earth Science project, fire products from AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) and MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) are compared to ensure the continuity of a long-term, multi-sensor historical fire record. An a posteriori analysis of burned area and active fire products is carried out to ensure proper quality assessment. The product evaluation is primarily based on high resolution ETM+ (Enhanced Thematic Mapper) and ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) imagery. The key effort of this NASA Land-Cover Land-Use Change project is to facilitate the development of an integrated regional fire monitoring system that will provide various user communities with data of known accuracy in a long-term, sustained manner. The UMd fire group is providing MODIS active fire products and processing software. MODIS fire data, together with active fire products generated at the Russian partner institutions from the precursor AVHRR are collected into an integrated database, which is evaluated for science quality and used to analyze fire dynamics at various spatial and temporal scales in Northern Eurasia.
