RECENT DATA AND INFORMATION-SYSTEM INITIATIVES FOR REMOTELY-SENSED MEASUREMENTS OF THE LAND-SURFACE

As part of the International Satellite Land Satellite Climatology Prog ram (ISLSCP) Workshop on Remote Sensing of the Land Surface for Studie s of Global Change, five invited presentations were given on recent da ta initiatives relevant to the ISLSCP community. The presentations are summarized in this paper along with some observations by the authors on data systems for the land sciences community. The invited presentat ions are by no means all inclusive but were selected as examples of cu rrent data activities, representing a range of topics associated with data for land sciences including the generation of global and local sc ale data sets, the reworking of historical data sets, new data initiat ives and same programmatic aspects of land data base development. This paper serves to provide information on these data initiatives and to air some of the issues concerning land science data systems that were raised at the meeting.