Extended Abstract (112K)J8.2
Land use and seasonal green vegetation cover of the Conterminous USA for use in numerical weather models
Kevin P. Gallo, NOAA/NESDIS and EROS Data Center, Sioux Falls, SD; and T. Owen and B. Reed
The land cover classes developed under the coordination of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme Data and Information System (IGBP-DIS) have been analyzed for a study area that includes the Conterminous United States and portions of Mexico and Canada. The 1-km resolution data have been analyzed to produce a gridded data set that includes within each 20-km grid cell: 1) the three most dominant land cover classes, 2) the fractional area associated with each of the three dominant classes, and 3) the fractional area covered by water. Additionally, the monthly fraction of green vegetation cover (fgreen) associated with each of the three dominant land cover classes per grid cell was derived from a 5-year climatology of 1-km resolution NOAA-AVHRR data. The variables derived in this study provide a potential improvement over the use of monthly fgreen linked to a single land cover class per model grid cell, as currently used in some numerical weather models.
Joint Session 8, Role of vegetation and land cover/land use in the water cycle (Joint with the Symposium on Observing and Understanding the Variability of Water in Weather and Climate and the 17th Conference on Hydrology)
Thursday, 13 February 2003, 8:30 AM-12:15 PM
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