The Valencia Anchor Station, a Cal/val Reference Area for Large-scale Low Spatial Resolution Remote Sensing Missions

New and forthcoming Earth Observation satellite missions include in their payloads remote sensing instruments of very low spatial resolution. Data and product validation from these sensors introduces a set of specific scientific issues that make it necessary to carry out specific measurements over large extended areas. The main objective of the VALENCIA Anchor Station is to define a reference area (Utiel-Requena Plateau, at about 80 km from the city of Valencia, Spain) robustly equipped with suitable automatic meteorological instruments and to provide a methodology to characterise significant geophysical parameters, representative of sufficiently large zones in relation to the pixel size of the remote sensing sensor under consideration. The region (about 50x50 km 2 ) is highly convenient thanks to its large-scale reasonable homogeneity from different viewpoints (climatology, land use, topography, etc.). The station has also available complementary mobile instrumentation to produce reliable parameters representative of relatively large areas defined around the Anchor Station.