NOAA SNPP/JPSS Vegetation Index Products, and Algorithm Development

The Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) will provide operational continuity of satellite-based observations and products for NOAA’s Polar Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) satellite. S-NPP was launched in October 2011, and JPSS-1 is planned for launch in 2017. Vegetation products derived from satellite measurements are used to monitor the environment including drought, land degradation, deforestation, the health of ecosystems, forest fires, crop monitoring, land cover classification, as well as for weather forecasting and climate research. Vegetation Index and Green Vegetation Fraction (GVF) products derived from the S-NPP Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument are being generated operationally at the JPSS Interface Data Processing Segment (IDPS),  and S-NPP Data Exploitation (NDE) production facilities respectively, and distributed through the NOAA Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System (CLASS). The S-NPP VIIRS Vegetation Index (VI) Environmental Data Record (EDR) consists of two products, the Top Of Atmosphere (TOA) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and the Top Of Canopy (TOC) Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI). The VI EDR is generated in granule style at 375 meter resolution and hdf5 format. The VI EDR products have been validated against MODIS VI products and VI derived from FLUXNET radiation measurements. For JPSS-1, the S-NPP Vegetation Index EDR algorithm has been updated to include the TOC NDVI, additional quality flags, and improved high quality definitions for the three indices. The new JPSS-1 Vegetation Index EDR algorithm will be deployed and transitioned to operations within the Block 2.0 JPSS Ground System before JPSS-1 launch.  The VIIRS Green Vegetation Fraction (GVF) product consists of a weekly (updated daily) global GVF dataset at 4 kilometer resolution, and a weekly (updated daily) regional GVF at 1 kilometer resolution centered at the United States (Coverage Lat 90°N - 7.5°S,  Lon 130°E - 30°E). These GVF products have been shown to meet the JPSS program requirements, and are currently at the provisional validation stage. In support of the NOAA/NESDIS Ground Enterprise Architecture System (GEARS), NESDIS/STAR/JPSS land algorithm developers started developing the Enterprise  algorithm for vegetation index products from JPSS, GOES-R, and other non-NOAA missions like Sentinel-3 and Himawari, to better serve the needs of NOAA operational users, and the scientific community. The JPSS land science team continues to work on detailed validation and monitoring of the S-NPP VIIRS derived vegetation products and on preparation for the JPSS-1 satellite.