THE MODERATE RESOLUTION IMAGING SPECTRORADIOMETER (MODIS) - LAND REMOTE-SENSING FOR GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH

The first Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instru ment is planned for launch by NASA in 1998. This instrument will provi de a new and improved capability for terrestrial satellite remote sens ing aimed at meeting the needs of global change research, The MODIS st andard products will provide new and improved tools for moderate resol ution land surface monitoring, These higher order data products have b een designed to remove the burden of certain common types of data proc essing from the user community and meet the more general needs of glob al-to-regional monitoring, modeling, and assessment. The near-daily co verage of moderate resolution data from MODIS, coupled with the planne d increase in high-resolution sampling from Landsat 7, will provide a powerful combination of observations, The full potential of MODIS will be realized once a stable and well-calibrated time-series of multispe ctral data has been established. In this paper the proposed MODIS stan dard products for land applications are described along with the curre nt plans for data quality assessment and product validation.