N: 90 S: -90 E: 180 W: -180
Description
The MOD15A2H Version 6 data product was decommissioned on July 31, 2023. Users are encouraged to use the MOD15A2H Version 6.1 data product.
The MOD15A2H Version 6 Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) combined Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Fraction of Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FPAR) product is an 8-day composite dataset with 500 meter (m) pixel size. The algorithm chooses the “best” pixel available from all the acquisitions of the Terra sensor from within the 8-day period.
LAI is defined as the one-sided green leaf area per unit ground area in broadleaf canopies and as one-half the total needle surface area per unit ground area in coniferous canopies. FPAR is defined as the fraction of incident photosynthetically active radiation, 400-700 nanometers (nm), absorbed by the green elements of a vegetation canopy.
Science Datasets (SDSs) in the Level 4 (L4) MOD15A2H product include LAI, FPAR, two quality layers, and standard deviation for LAI and FPAR. Two low resolution browse images, LAI and FPAR, are also available for each MOD15A2H granule.
Known Issues
- For complete information about known issues please refer to the MODIS/VIIRS Land Quality Assessment website.
Version Description
Product Summary
Citation
Citation is critically important for dataset documentation and discovery. This dataset is openly shared, without restriction, in accordance with the EOSDIS Data Use and Citation Guidance.
Copy Citation
Gorelick, N., Hancher, M., Dixon, M., Ilyushchenko, S., Thau, D., & Moore, R. (2017). Google Earth Engine: Planetary-scale geospatial analysis for everyone. Remote Sensing of Environment. MODIS Version 6 Leaf Area Index/FPAR 4-day L5 Global 500m Myneni, R., Y. Knyazikhin, T. Park. MOD15A2H MODIS/Terra Leaf Area Index/FPAR 8-Day L4 Global 500m SIN Grid V006. 2015, distributed by NASA EOSDIS Land Processes DAAC, https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD15A2H.006 Landsat 5/7/8 Collection 1 Surface Reflectance
Landsat Level-2 Surface Reflectance Science Product courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Masek, J.G., Vermote, E.F., Saleous N.E., Wolfe, R., Hall, F.G., Huemmrich, K.F., Gao, F., Kutler, J., and Lim, T-K. (2006). A Landsat surface reflectance dataset for North America, 1990–2000. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters 3(1):68-72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LGRS.2005.857030.
Vermote, E., Justice, C., Claverie, M., & Franch, B. (2016). Preliminary analysis of the performance of the Landsat 8/OLI land surface reflectance product. Remote Sensing of Environment. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2016.04.008. National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD)
Yang, Limin, Jin, Suming, Danielson, Patrick, Homer, Collin G., Gass, L., Bender, S.M., Case, Adam, Costello, C., Dewitz, Jon A., Fry, Joyce A., Funk, M., Granneman, Brian J., Liknes, G.C., Rigge, Matthew B., Xian, George, A new generation of the United States National Land Cover Database—Requirements, research priorities, design, and implementation strategies: ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, v. 146, p. 108–123, at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2018.09.006 Resource Software Recommended: Microsoft Excel,url: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/excel
Resource Title: LAI_training_samples_CONUS.
File Name: LAI_train_samples_CONUS_v0.1.1.csv
Resource Description: This CSV file consists of the training samples for estimating Leaf Area Index based on Landsat surface reflectance images (Collection 1 Tire 1). Each sample has a MODIS LAI value and corresponding surface reflectance derived from Landsat pixels within the MODIS pixel. Contact: Yanghui Kang (kangyanghui@gmail.com)
Column description
UID: Unique identifier. Format: LATITUDE_LONGITUDE_SENSOR_PATHROW_DATE
Landsat_ID: Landsat image ID
Date: Landsat image date in "YYYYMMDD"
Latitude: Latitude (WGS84) of the MODIS LAI pixel center
Longitude: Longitude (WGS84) of the MODIS LAI pixel center
MODIS_LAI: MODIS LAI value in "m2/m2"
MODIS_LAI_std: MODIS LAI standard deviation in "m2/m2"
MODIS_LAI_sat: 0 - MODIS Main (RT) method used no saturation; 1 - MODIS Main (RT) method with saturation
NLCD_class: Majority class code from the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD)
NLCD_frequency: Percentage of the area cover by the majority class from NLCD
Biome: Biome type code mapped from NLCD (see below for more information)
Blue: Landsat surface reflectance in the blue band
Green: Landsat surface reflectance in the green band
Red: Landsat surface reflectance in the red band
Nir: Landsat surface reflectance in the near infrared band
Swir1: Landsat surface reflectance in the shortwave infrared 1 band
Swir2: Landsat surface reflectance in the shortwave infrared 2 band
Sun_zenith: Solar zenith angle from the Landsat image metadata. This is a scene-level value.
Sun_azimuth: Solar azimuth angle from the Landsat image metadata. This is a scene-level value.
NDVI: Normalized Difference Vegetation Index computed from Landsat surface reflectance
EVI: Enhanced Vegetation Index computed from Landsat surface reflectance
NDWI: Normalized Difference Water Index computed from Landsat surface reflectance
GCI: Green Chlorophyll Index = Nir/Green - 1
1 - Deciduous Forest
2 - Evergreen Forest
3 - Mixed Forest
4 - Shrubland
5 - Grassland/Pasture
6 - Cropland
7 - Woody Wetland
8 - Herbaceous Wetland
Reference Dataset:
All data was accessed through Google Earth Engine
Gorelick, N., Hancher, M., Dixon, M., Ilyushchenko, S., Thau, D., & Moore, R. (2017). Google Earth Engine: Planetary-scale geospatial analysis for everyone. Remote Sensing of Environment.
MODIS Version 6 Leaf Area Index/FPAR 4-day L5 Global 500m Myneni, R., Y. Knyazikhin, T. Park. MOD15A2H MODIS/Terra Leaf Area Index/FPAR 8-Day L4 Global 500m SIN Grid V006. 2015, distributed by NASA EOSDIS Land Processes DAAC, https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD15A2H.006
Landsat 5/7/8 Collection 1 Surface Reflectance
Landsat Level-2 Surface Reflectance Science Product courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Masek, J.G., Vermote, E.F., Saleous N.E., Wolfe, R., Hall, F.G., Huemmrich, K.F., Gao, F., Kutler, J., and Lim, T-K. (2006). A Landsat surface reflectance dataset for North America, 1990–2000. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters 3(1):68-72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LGRS.2005.857030.
Vermote, E., Justice, C., Claverie, M., & Franch, B. (2016). Preliminary analysis of the performance of the Landsat 8/OLI land surface reflectance product. Remote Sensing of Environment. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2016.04.008.
National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD)
Yang, Limin, Jin, Suming, Danielson, Patrick, Homer, Collin G., Gass, L., Bender, S.M., Case, Adam, Costello, C., Dewitz, Jon A., Fry, Joyce A., Funk, M., Granneman, Brian J., Liknes, G.C., Rigge, Matthew B., Xian, George, A new generation of the United States National Land Cover Database—Requirements, research priorities, design, and implementation strategies: ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, v. 146, p. 108–123, at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2018.09.006
Resource Software Recommended: Microsoft Excel,url: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/excel}, publisher={ICPSR - Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research}, author={US Department of Agriculture and National Agricultural Library}, year={2026}, language={en} }
File Naming Convention
The file name begins with the Product Short Name (MOD15A2H) followed by the Julian Date of Acquisition formatted as AYYYYDDD (A2002273), the Tile Identifier which is horizontal tile and vertical tile provided as hXXvYY (h20v06), the Version of the data collection (006), the Julian Date and Time of Production designated as YYYYDDDHHMMSS (2015151112325), and the Data Format (hdf).
Documents
USER'S GUIDE
ALGORITHM THEORETICAL BASIS DOCUMENT (ATBD)
DATA PRODUCT SPECIFICATION
PRODUCT QUALITY ASSESSMENT
Publications Citing This Dataset
| Title | Year Sort ascending | Author | Topic |
|---|---|---|---|
| The weekly cycle of photosynthesis in Europe reveals the negative impact of particulate pollution on ecosystem productivity | He, Liyin, Rosa, Lorenzo, Lobell, David B., Wang, Yuan, Yin, Yi, Doughty, Russell, Yao, Yitong, Berry, Joseph A., Frankenberg, Christian | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Land Use/Land Cover Classification, Optical Depth/Thickness, Clouds, Cloud Condensation Nuclei, Cloud Droplet Concentration/Size, Cloud Liquid Water/Ice, Cloud Optical Depth/Thickness, Cloud Precipitable Water, Cloud Frequency, Cloud Height, Cloud Top Pressure, Cloud Vertical Distribution | |
| Traceraided ecohydrological modelling across climate, land cover, and topographical gradients in the Tropics | ArciniegaEsparza, Saul, Birkel, Christian, DuranQuesada, Ana Maria, SanchezMurillo, Ricardo, Moore, Georgianne W., Maneta, Marco P., Boll, Jan, Negri, Laura Benegas, Tetzlaff, Dorthe, Yoshimura, Kei, Soulsby, Chris | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar) | |
| TranspirationSoil evaporation partitioning determines inter-model differences in soil moisture and evapotranspiration coupling | Feng, Huihui, Wu, Zhiyong, Dong, Jianzhi, Zhou, Jianhong, Brocca, Luca, He, Hai | Surface Pressure, Heat Flux, Longwave Radiation, Shortwave Radiation, Surface Temperature, Humidity, Evapotranspiration, Surface Winds, Rain, Precipitation Rate, Snow, Soil Moisture/Water Content, Soil Temperature, Land Surface Temperature, Snow Water Equivalent, Runoff, Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar) | |
| Validation of Simplified Level 2 Prototype Processor Sentinel-2 fraction of canopy cover, fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation and leaf area index ... | Fernandes, Richard, Brown, Luke, Canisius, Francis, Dash, Jadu, He, Liming, Hong, Gang, Huang, Lucy, Le, Nhu Quynh, MacDougall, Camryn, Meier, Courtney, Darko, Patrick Osei, Shah, Hemit, Spafford, Lynsay, Sun, Lixin | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Leaf Characteristics, Photosynthetically Active Radiation | |
| Forest productivity recovery or collapse? Model-data integration | Au, J., Bloom, A. A., Parazoo, N. C., Deans, R. M., Wong, C. Y. S., Houlton, B. Z., Magney, T. S. | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar) | |
| Evaluation of biogenic emissions from three different vegetation distributions in South Korea | Yu, Jinhyeok, Han, Kyung M., Song, Chul H., Lee, Kyunghwa, Lee, Sojin, Kim, Younha, Woo, Jung-Hun, Kim, Saewung, Wisthaler, Armin | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Leaf Characteristics, Photosynthetically Active Radiation | |
| Greening of human-dominated ecosystems in India | Park, Taejin, Gumma, Murali K., Wang, Weile, Panjala, Pranay, Dubey, Sunil K., Nemani, Ramakrishna R. | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar) | |
| Gridded livestock density database and spatial trends for Kazakhstan | Kolluru, Venkatesh, John, Ranjeet, Saraf, Sakshi, Chen, Jiquan, Hankerson, Brett, Robinson, Sarah, Kussainova, Maira, Jain, Khushboo | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Land Use/Land Cover Classification, Photosynthesis, Primary Production, Vegetation Productivity | |
| Accelerated vegetative growth measured by gross primary productivity in | Zuo, Chan, Wang, Junbang, Zhang, Xiujuan, Watson, Alan E. | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar) | |
| A deep transfer learning framework for mapping high spatiotemporal resolution LAI | Zhou, Junxiong, Yang, Qi, Liu, Licheng, Kang, Yanghui, Jia, Xiaowei, Chen, Min, Ghosh, Rahul, Xu, Shaomin, Jiang, Chongya, Guan, Kaiyu, Kumar, Vipin, Jin, Zhenong | Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Leaf Area Index (LAI), Leaf Characteristics, Photosynthetically Active Radiation, Reflectance, Anisotropy, Land Use/Land Cover Classification | |
| A physically-based potential evapotranspiration model for global water | Liu, Ziwei, Wang, Taihua, Li, Changming, Yang, Wencong, Yang, Hanbo | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar) | |
| Acclimation of phenology relieves leaf longevity constraints in | Marques, Laura, Hufkens, Koen, Bigler, Christof, Crowther, Thomas W., Zohner, Constantin M., Stocker, Benjamin D. | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Plant Phenology, Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) | |
| A Novel Approach for Predicting Large Wildfires Using Machine Learning | Agrawal, Nikita, Nelson, Peder V., Low, Russanne D. | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Vegetation Index, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) | |
| A county-level soybean yield prediction framework coupled with XGBoost | Li, Yuanchao, Zeng, Hongwei, Zhang, Miao, Wu, Bingfang, Zhao, Yan, Yao, Xia, Cheng, Tao, Qin, Xingli, Wu, Fangming | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Reflectance, Land Surface Temperature, Emissivity | |
| Bio-geophysical feedback to climate caused by the conversion of Amazon Forest to soybean plantations | Zhang, Jie, Wu, Jin, Hughes, Alice Catherine, Kaplan, Jed O., Maeda, Eduardo Eiji | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Albedo, Anisotropy | |
| BESSv2. 0: A satellite-based and coupled-process model for quantifying long-term global landatmosphere fluxes | Li, Bolun, Ryu, Youngryel, Jiang, Chongya, Dechant, Benjamin, Liu, Jiangong, Yan, Yulin, Li, Xing | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Land Use/Land Cover Classification, Canopy Characteristics, Evergreen Vegetation, Crown, Deciduous Vegetation, Leaf Characteristics, Vegetation Cover, Total Surface Precipitation Rate | |
| Balancing the Effects of Forest Conservation and Restoration on South | Peng, Jian, Hu, Tao, Qiu, Sijing, Hu, Yi'na, Dong, Jianquan, Lin, Yifan | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar) | |
| Assessing the sensitivity of multi-frequency passive microwave vegetation optical depth to vegetation properties | Schmidt, Luisa, Forkel, Matthias, Zotta, Ruxandra-Maria, Scherrer, Samuel, Dorigo, Wouter A., Kuhn-Regnier, Alexander, van der Schalie, Robin, Yebra, Marta | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar) | |
| Assessing the impacts of past and ongoing deforestation on rainfall | Duku, Confidence, Hein, Lars | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Leaf Characteristics, Photosynthetically Active Radiation, Albedo, Anisotropy, Reflectance | |
| Chemical identification of new particle formation and growth precursors through positive matrix factorization of ambient ion measurements | Katz, Daniel John, Abdelhamid, Aroob, Stark, Harald, Canagaratna, Manjula R., Worsnop, Douglas R., Browne, Eleanor C. | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar) | |
| Characterizing Errors Using Satellite Metadata for EcoHydrological Model Calibration | Zou, Hui, Marshall, Lucy, Sharma, Ashish | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar) | |
| Climate change increases carbon allocation to leaves in early leaf | Meng, Fandong, Hong, Songbai, Wang, Jiawei, Chen, Anping, Zhang, Yao, Zhang, Yichen, Janssens, Ivan A., Mao, Jiafu, Myneni, Ranga B., Penuelas, Josep, Piao, Shilong | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Plant Phenology, Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) | |
| Application of Different Weighting Schemes and Stochastic Simulations to Parameterization Processes Considering Observation Error: Implications for ... | Lee, Eunhee, Lee, Hyeonju, Park, Dongkyu, Hwang, Hyoun-Tae, Park, Changhui | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Leaf Characteristics, Photosynthetically Active Radiation | |
| Approaches to assessing the daily average ground surface soil heat flux on a regional scale over the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau | Yang, Cheng, Wu, Tonghua, Hu, Guojie, Zhu, Xiaofan, Yao, Jimin, Li, Ren, Zhao, Lin, Zhang, Yinghui | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Leaf Characteristics, Photosynthetically Active Radiation | |
| Carbon dynamics of Western North American boreal forests in response to stand-replacing disturbances | Yu, Ling, Fan, Lei, Ciais, Philippe, Sitch, Stephen, Fensholt, Rasmus, Xiao, Xiangming, Yuan, Wenping, Chen, Jingming, Zhang, Yingtong, Wu, Xiaocui, Qin, Yuanwei, Ma, Mingguo, Chang, Zhongbing, Wang, Mengjia, Yan, Kai, Song, Lisheng, Wigneron, Jean-Pierre | Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fapar), Aquatic Ecosystems, Terrestrial Ecosystems, Vegetation, Soils |