Current Status and potential applications of the LSA SAF suite of vegetation products

This work presents the current status of the Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LSA SAF) vegetation products and explores some advantages and potential applications. The LSA SAF SEVIRI vegetation products include the fractional vegetation cover (FVC), the leaf area index (LAI) and the fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (FAPAR). Multiple validation techniques have been performed to develop uncertainty information on vegetation products. The products are spatially and temporally consistent and present practically no missing data except for areas which are usually covered by snow. Large uncertainties are generally found in areas where the BRDF reliability is poor (e.g., wintertime at northern Europe). The observed deviations between LSA SAF and equivalent satellite products are in the order of 0.10-0.15 for FVC, 0.5-0.8 for LAI and about 0.1 for FAPAR. Similar or slightly higher deviations are often found between the respective products. The spatial coverage, temporal continuity and stability of the LSA SAF products is complementary of polar orbit based products, which in turn provide a finer spatial resolution. Mayor potential of SEVIRI products include automatic reconstruction of single year, and multi-year composite vegetation phenologies and delivery of parameters dedicated to near real-time monitoring of annual cycles (e.g. an early estimate of the season production).