Land and Vegetation Data Products for the ICESat-2 Mission

Abstract:

The Earth’s land surface is a complex mosaic of geomorphic units and land cover types resulting in large variations in terrain height, slope, roughness, vegetation height and reflectance, often with the variations occurring over very small spatial scales. Documentation of these landscape properties is a first step in understanding the interplay between the formative processes and response to changing conditions. ICESat-2 will provide a global distribution of geodetic measurements (of both the terrain surface and relative canopy heights) which will provide a significant benefit to society through a variety of applications including sea level change monitoring, forest structural mapping and biomass estimation, and improved global digital terrain models. Topography, or land surface height, is an important component for many height applications, both to the scientific and commercial sectors. In addition to producing a global terrain product, monitoring the amount and distribution of above ground vegetation and carbon pools enables improved characterization of the global carbon budget. Although ICESat-2 is not positioned to provide global biomass estimates due to its profiling configuration and limited detection capabilities for some ecosystems, it is anticipated that the ICESat-2 data products for vegetation will be complementary to other ongoing biomass and vegetation mapping efforts. Topographic and canopy data products from ICESat-2 will be produced and delivered in both an along-track (profiling) mode and gridded mode. To increase the spatial sampling of ICESat-2 measurements over non-cryospheric regions, ICESat-2 will be off-nadir pointed at various angles (maximum of 1.8 degrees) from the reference ground track during the entire mission.